Close Encounters of the Tenth Kind
by Haiza Tyri
Summary: In the course of a case, Reese and Finch meet the Tenth Doctor and Martha, and Reese learns something new about Finch. Finch and Martha quarrel and perform triage. Sequels are "Interlude Before The Angels" and "Old Spies, or Mr. Finch Goes To Tea."
1. Chapter 1: Reese

**Author's Note: Set sometime between "Blink" and "Utopia."  
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><p><strong>To fight for the right without question or pause<strong>

_Reese_

Reese planted his foot in the man's chest and watched him go down like a shapeless sack of rags. "Finch, this guy's bodyguards are good. German ex-military, by their style. Have you found any German connections?"

"Not yet, but his records are a mess," Finch's voice said in his ear. "Obviously falsified, but they look like they were falsified by a blind magician playing pin-the-tail-on-the-world-map."

"What is that supposed to mean?"

"His name is Nobunori Vincenzo, his picture is of a blond man in his forties, and his birth records say he was born in the 1930s and that his mother was Iranian and his father Venezuelan."

"Now that's odd. False identities are supposed to hide you, not advertise. What is this man advertising?"

"Only that he doesn't exist," came a cheery voice behind him. Half a second later, Reese's gun was pointing at the forehead of the brown-haired, brown-suited, brown-coated young man with the British voice.

"Mr. Reese, what is that?"

"British guy," Reese said coolly.

"Oh, I'm not British. Gallifreyan. Now, _that's_ odd. You're American. You should hear me as American, just as you would hear me in German if you were German. I never thought of that. After all, she has the capacity to recognize that there are different dialects of English, but she seems to prefer British."

Reese cocked his head slightly, examining. Despite the nonsense speech, he didn't think the man was tweaking. He had an open face as cheerful as his voice, a quirky and mischievous eyebrow, childlike high top sneakers…but his eyes. Reese knew those eyes. They were the eyes of a man who had killed. Who had killed again and again, who might kill again in the future, who hated himself more with every life ended behind him. They were the eyes that looked at him out of the mirror every morning. He lowered his gun.

"Thanks!" Behind the cheer there was a pinched look around the edges of his eyes. Reese knew he'd seen the same things he himself had. "Now, don't you think it's time to run?"

At the same time, Finch said in his ear, "You'd better get out of there, Mr. Reese."

"I don't have what I came for, Finch."

"Oh, don't worry! I have it." The stranger held up a flash drive.

The large number of footsteps coming near told Reese that he'd better do as the man said and find out if he really had what Reese was after later. They ran. The strange British man was only marginally shorter than Reese and just as fast.

"I like running," he panted with a grin. "I do a lot of it, come to think about it. That's why I chose these shoes. No, that's not true. I chose the shoes before I knew I'd be doing a lot of running. But they do help."

"Talking doesn't help," Reese said shortly.

"Oh, talking always helps!"

Their way was blocked by a locked door. Reese pulled out his gun again. Occasionally shooting a lock was quicker than picking it. But the skinny British man pushed his hand aside.

"No guns!"

_No guns?_ "In case you haven't noticed, the people after us have guns."

"Oh, they always do. But I never carry a gun." He had a silver and blue instrument out and aimed at the doorknob, and it was making an odd, high-pitched noise. Reese thought he knew all of the latest breaking-and-entering devices, but he'd never seen one like this.

Finch evidently could hear it too. "Mr. Reese, what is that?"

"New technology," he answered.

"No, old. Sonic screwdriver. Opens anything. Well, except deadbolts. Well, except wood, too."

The door snapped open, and they were through. The brown man used his device to lock the door behind him.

"I should get Finch one of those. Then he'd be able to pick a lock in _under_ ten minutes."

"My lock-picking skills are perfectly adequate, Mr. Reese. What did he say it was? The noise was causing interference."

"Sonic screwdriver," he grunted as they ran again.

Finch was silent for a moment. Reese could just see his spiky head tilting slightly as he considered the concept. "I have never heard of such a thing. Screwdriver—sonic. An elegant concept. You could turn far more than screws."

"Like locks."

Now footsteps were coming from the opposite direction. Reese had his gun ready again. His companion gave him an exasperated look.

"Would you _stop_ with the gun?"

"I did not invite you along on my operation." He cocked his head. "It's only one person. Female."

The man sprang around the corner before Reese could stop him. "Martha!"

"Doctor, this is the second time I've been to New York with you, the _real_ New York, not some New-New-New York clone, and what am I doing _again?_ Running from men with guns in a skyscraper. At least it's not the Empire State Building again."

Reese sighed and stepped quietly around the corner to investigate the new Brit. Young, dark, beautiful, and, to judge by her eyes, quick-witted. She grabbed her friend's arm.

"Doctor!"

"It's alright, Martha. He's my friend. I told you I was meeting a friend here. Here he is." His brilliant smile encompassed them all.

"I am not your friend. But now it looks like I'm stuck with protecting both of you until I can return you to your insane asylum."

Martha was giving him a frankly admiring look, but the man she called Doctor held out his hand.

"Did you get it?"

She held out a cell phone. "Yes, but I don't know _why_ I was taking a picture of a blank wall."

"Later, Martha! Time to run!"

"Now who was that, Mr. Reese?" Finch asked. "You seem to be acquiring quite a number of people. I thought this was a covert operation."

"Friend of the doctor's," he said shortly.

"Doctor? Doctor What?"

"I don't know. She only said _doctor._ Name: Martha. Nationality: British. Heavily involved in whatever it is this doctor is doing, but definitely not a professional. They seem to have some experience with being chased.

"I'm researching sonic screwdrivers. It's a rare enough device that I should be able to track anyone who has one."

"That's a little frightening, Finch."

He could almost hear Finch's shrug, if the man had upper-body mobility enough to be able to shrug.

At a crossroads of dull white corridors, there was a decided difference of opinion.

_"This_ is the only way out!" Reese insisted, pointing to the left.

"I have a much better way out _this_ way!" the British doctor insisted, pointing to the right.

In the end, Reese had to go with them, because it was that or leave them to their fates at the hands of the old-young, blond, Japanese-Italian-Iranian-Venezuelan whose number had come up. _Their_ numbers hadn't come up, because they were British and didn't have them. Which begged the question, how many faceless tourists, illegal immigrants, and foreign political or religious visitors died daily because the Machine didn't track people without Social Security numbers?

When he gave in and went with them, he saw them give each other grins that looked oddly relieved and saw the doctor's shoulders relax a little. "What is it? What do you know that I don't?"

The young British man turned and gave him a look as gently serious as his grins had been bright and flippant. He looked old, suddenly, not ten or fifteen years younger than Reese. "It was an ambush. You were to be killed. We came to save your life. It wasn't your time yet."

Reese stopped in his tracks. What were they, the British counterparts to him and Finch? "How did you know?"

"That's…complicated."

_It couldn't be any more complicated than the Machine._

"Are you coming?" Martha called. She had stopped by an office door. The doctor hurried to catch up with her and apply his screwdriver to the lock.

"And how are you going to make your big escape from an office?" Reese asked sardonically.

"Perhaps they have watched the latest Batman movie, Mr. Reese."

"Are you telling me _you_ watched the latest Batman movie, Mr. Finch?"

Finch did not answer. Reese grinned to himself.

The office door unlocked, and the doctor swung it open with a cheery, "Allons'y!"

Reese's first thought upon entering the office, gun drawn, was that someone had a very odd sense of style, which was not usually his first thought upon entering a new environment. But no one could help but wonder what kind of a person would nearly fill his office with what looked like a blue shed.

Martha walked straight up to it. "This is our big escape."

He read the words at the top. "Police Box? What is it—a phone booth?"

"Phone _booth,"_ the British man repeated. "You Americans wouldn't call it a box, would you?"

Reese raised an eyebrow. "No…"

Martha had opened the door and stepped in. Warm light came from inside. Something was odd here. He went toward the door, cocking his gun.

"Don't you dare shoot her."

"I have no intention of shooting your friend."

"I didn't mean Martha."

"You keep other young ladies in there?"

"No. They always leave," the young man said softly.

Reese gave him a look and went toward the door. He pushed it open and stepped inside, gun first, and then stopped cold. That…was not possible.


	2. Chapter 2: Finch

**The impossible dream**

_Finch_

Finch sat at his desk, not working, his fingers curled around the edge of the desk. Not possible, his rational mind told him. It was a childhood daydream of the sort that he had not allowed himself to have for many years now. He was not a fanciful man. He did not allow himself to leap to conclusions based on ill-heard snippets of conversation. But an unnamed doctor, mysterious technology, and he could swear he heard Reese say, "Police box." People didn't just go around saying, "Police box." The two words together made no rational sense, without certain associations. And now all he could hear was a sound, a wild and whirling sound that dampened Reese's voice through his cell phone.

"Why, this is a very midsummer madness," he murmured and wondered when he had started quoting Shakespeare to himself.

The sound was not coming through the phone any longer. It was in his library-office, his sanctuary, filling the room. Papers were blown around; the photograph of the blond Nobunori Vincenzo tore off the glass and hurtled itself at him. He got up slowly from his chair; indeed, it was always difficult to get up any way but slowly these days, but today he got up slowly because he didn't know if he could bear the excitement rising in him out of his childhood.

It was there, the blue phone booth. He reached out and put a hand on it and felt, as he had once done long ago, that it was _alive._ At any moment, he was certain, the door would open, and an old man would come out, white-haired, formally dressed, dignified, crotchety, and sweet all at once, and there would be a girl with him, a strange girl who spoke of strange things in a rather formal way, and her name would be Susan. He had sometimes dreamed of Susan, as a boy; he had never found Susan, as a man; if he were a not a man not given to fancy, he might sometimes be thought to think of the Machine as being named Susan. But of course, he was not given to fancy, so he didn't. And Reese had said Martha. Of course, he could have been wrong, but Reese was not often wrong. And the old man would have to be long dead by now.

But still, here was the blue phone booth, to prove to him that he was _not_ a man of fancy, that his boyhood daydreams had been firmly grounded in reality.

The door opened, and a man came out. Not an old man, formally dressed. A young man, dressed in a quirky combination of formal and informal, thick brown hair absolutely untidy. He looked all around Finch's wonderful library with a broad smile, and then his eyes fell on Finch standing and touching his phone booth in exactly the same way he had touched it over forty years ago. The eyes stared, tried to place him, and it was only then that Finch knew it was the same man. They were the same eyes, full of time and space and knowledge, only older, much older. The old man had had young eyes. The young man had old eyes. Maybe they aged backwards, these people who traveled in telephone booths.

Finally recognition sprang into the man's eyes. He cried, "Harold!" and, darting forward, threw his arms around Finch.

It hurt and was also uncomfortable for a very private, somewhat paranoid recluse, but over his shoulder Finch saw Reese's eyes nearly popping out of his head, and that was worth everything.

"Hello, Doctor," he said primly.

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><p><strong>Author's note: Yes, I know it's a phonebox, but it would never occur to an American to call a phone booth a phonebox. It's just not in our terminology.<strong>


	3. Chapter 3: Reese

**This is my quest**

_Reese_

Out of all the unforeseen things to happen in a day, watching Harold Finch being hugged energetically by an impetuous time traveler was the most unexpected. Reese could take the bigger-on-the-inside thing; he could take the time travel; he could take a man who chose to be known only as "the Doctor" (that said a lot about him right there). But recognition and pure happiness on Finch's face instead of sheer terror (or even calm annoyance) was beyond everything. For a moment he could have sworn the little man looked no more than ten years old.

Martha was standing beside him staring too. "Did you know they knew each other?"

"No."

"The Doctor always seems to know someone everywhere we go. Once he took me to Felsenleder. Most remote planet in the universe, he said. And who did we meet there but the second cousin of an old mate he'd known two hundred years ago. We spent the entire time listening to them swap stories. Then the second cousin tried to kill us, but that always happens."

Reese looked from her to Finch, trying to decide whom to interrogate first.

"This may perhaps be over-obvious, but you look different than I remember," Finch was saying. "Have you been aging backward?"

The Doctor's eyebrows shot up. "No, but that's a good hypothesis, very good."

"I love that, when he compliments someone's intelligence," Martha said. "He did it to me the first time we met. Makes you feel good, until you realize it's like an adult artist complimenting a four-year old's drawing. He's absolutely bonkers about the human race, but he's still surprised to find intelligence among us."

_He'll find it in Finch if he finds it anywhere,_ Reese mused, trying to listen to her and to the Finch-Doctor conversation at the same time.

"What it really is is that anytime I need to die, I just funnel it into regeneration and pop out into a new body. Very useful, and helps with the longevity. It's been, oh, about six hundred years since I met you, Harold, and ten regenerations. You must have made quite an impression on me. Of course, you hardly look any different, unlike me. It can't have been very long for you."

"Proportionally probably about the same," Finch said with a small, pale smile. "Forty-four years. I had convinced myself it was all in my imagination, which was distressing, to think that I had such an imagination. You know how children are. Is Susan still traveling with you, after all this time?"

The Doctor's eyes did what Reese had seen the eyes of many an operative do when talk turned to family, friends, old associations. They went bleak, empty. "No. She's…gone."

Finch obviously knew he'd blundered. A man who avoided and turned aside all questions about his own past should know not to ask personal questions. What made him so eager to know about this Susan that he would break his own rule? Forty-four years ago he would have been a child. Now, here was a story he was not going to get away without telling. Never mind that the Doctor claimed it was six hundred years ago for him. Reese was prepared to accept nearly anything from a man who had _that_ time machine and _those_ eyes.

"Doctor, you really must tell us all about what Finch was like as a child," he said in the smooth voice he reserved for needling his friend.

"Finch?" the Doctor echoed.

Finch said quickly, "Doctor, won't you introduce me to your friend?"

"Oh, this is Martha Jones. She's brilliant. Martha, this is Harold…Finch. Last time I meet you, you were a Sparrow, Harold. Sparrow…" he repeated to himself.

"Oh, Harold switches names like you switch bodies, it seems," Reese said.

"You are one to talk, Mr. Reese."

"Sparrow…" the Doctor said again. "I just met a Sparrow, about a month ago, or five years ago, depending on how you look at it. Sally Sparrow. Brilliant girl. Owned a shop called Sparrow and Nightingale. Any relation? London?"

"Do you think I gave you my real name back then either?" Finch asked with quiet amusement.

"But you were ten years old!" The Doctor grinned. "Oh, you were brilliant. One of the sharpest companions I've ever had, and that's saying a lot. If you'd been older, it would have lasted longer than an afternoon. I would have taken you with me. But even I can't go around kidnapping children."

"I wish you had."

The moment he said it, in his evenly quiet voice, Finch looked like he wished he hadn't. The Doctor seemed to recognize that Finch had as much not to talk about in his past as he did himself, and he plunged on.

"Let me tell you, Mr. Reese, this boy knew _everything."_

"I don't doubt it," Reese said, deliberately making his voice even more mocking. He and Finch had an unspoken arrangement, wherein his poking into Finch's past could never seem serious, and at moments like these, where pain hovered so close to the surface, mockery was the only way he was allowed to show he cared. That was fine with him. He didn't know how to bear caring.

"No matter what I needed that afternoon, he knew where to get it. He knew all about the people in that little town—which husband was a secret drinker, which wife was having an affair, which house got its milk on the wrong day. It was the milk that unraveled the whole mystery. That was an adventure, wasn't it, Harold Sparrow?"

Finch smiled. "It was. I was secretly glad you left me out of the danger, though. Danger and I…do not mix well." He looked up at Reese's quiet snort. "Unlike Mr. Reese, who attracts it. Mr. Reese, tell me why you brought these people here."

"I didn't. The Doctor knew where to go."

"Well, you did, actually," the Doctor said apologetically. "I mean, you will have. I said you were a friend, Mr. Reese. The next time we meet, it'll be the other way round. You'll know me, and I won't know you. You'll bring me here. But you won't tell me the man who owned this place was brilliant little Harold Sparrow."

_Was?_ He refused to allow the curl of fear to take hold. "He won't be here?" he said in his softest voice.

The Doctor shook his head, impassive. "I can't say more. Mixing the time streams is dangerous." He dug in an inside pocket. "Now, _here's_ why we came. This flash drive has everything John was after, and Martha's mobile has information I need that can only be seen on the kind of equipment Harold has. Very clever, that. No human would be looking for it, and no non-human would use such primitive human technology to find it."

"You're just as rude as you were six hundred years ago," Finch said mildly, taking the flash drive and sitting down at his desk.

"You'd better be careful, Doctor," Reese said. "You've just insulted his wife by insulting his technology."

"Oh, Doctor, that's dangerous," Martha grinned. "You wouldn't want anyone insulting your TARDIS now, would you?"

Finch's hedgehog-like head came up. "TARDIS," he repeated. "Yes, I remember that. 'Time And Relative Dimensions In Space,' Susan said. I had no idea what that meant. I still don't."

"It means it's bigger on the inside," Reese told him.

Finch swiveled slowly and awkwardly in his chair to look at him. "It is?"

"You never even went in?"

"No. I was…afraid." He swiveled more quickly back, wincing as he did. Rapid movements were never good. Reese wondered what it had done to that fused spine when Finch rescued him from Mark Snow. There had been a great deal of rapid movement that day. He'd been in too great a haze of pain and shock from blood loss to even think of it, and later, when he was cognizant again, Harold had seemed just fine. Rescuing girls, poking would-be rapists in the eye just like he'd shown him… Reese's lip curled slightly in a faint grin.

"Come have a look," he said gently.

"No. Work first."

_Still afraid, Harold?_

They all gathered around Finch's desk. He twisted slightly in obvious discomfort at having three people hovering around him, but Reese, for one, wasn't moving. The computer genius plugged in the flash drive and brought up the files; they all leaned in closer to see. Finch almost wriggled with unease (as much as a man with a fused spine can wriggle), but Martha was the only one who moved back a little.

"I pulled just about everything on his hard drive," the Doctor said. "There was a lot there, for a man who doesn't exist."

"What do you mean, doesn't exist?" Finch asked with a frown.

"I mean, doesn't exist. Never did. The fake identity is fake because it conceals an empty hole. Nothing there. Zilch. Nada. You of all people should know how easy that is."

Finch gave him a look Reese was very familiar with, a sort of faintly disdainful disapproval of the substance of a particular speech.

"Why would we be given an empty number?" Reese wondered.

"It's obvious, Mr. Reese." Finch's fingers were flying over the keyboard. "This empty number is a danger to _someone._ The question is, who?"

"The whole planet, I imagine," the Doctor answered. "Though maybe only New York."

"_Only_ New York?" Finch's eyes, large and pale behind his glasses and under nearly nonexistent eyelashes, gleamed in the twilight he liked to keep his library in.

"It's _always_ the whole planet," Martha muttered. "Never just one little person in danger. We've always got the weight of the whole planet resting on us."

"Sometimes the weight of one little person is just as heavy as the weight of the whole planet, Miss Jones," Finch said quietly. He almost jumped when the Doctor gently squeezed his shoulder.

"Harold Finch, you are my kind of man. Now, what does a nonexistent man store on his hard drive?"

Financial records, mainly, a complicated jumble Finch and the Doctor both deciphered with ease. Reese stood back a little. This wasn't his area. He could pluck a single offnote out of the complete spectrum of an individual's behavior, but he left the numbers and codes to Finch.

"Just as I thought," the Doctor said finally. "Another false trail. Nothing there. No—wait. Look at _that."_ He pointed to one little line in a file of many little lines. He and Finch both leaned in to look at it.

With a little of Finch's jiggery-pokery, new files came up, accessed through his web of hacking and contacts. Reese thought Finch enjoyed his web, being able to stay back, closeted and safe in his library, while his tentacles could spread out through the world. Surely only the internet could allow you to be everywhere all over the world without ever once stepping out of your cocoon.

"He's buying up land, buildings. Vast amounts of money to hand. Reaching into Wall street, city government, gangs, the Mob… He's everywhere," the Doctor said.

"Does that sound like someone to you, Finch?"

"Elias."

"No, Elias is small beans compared to him," the Doctor shook his head. "Think Elias on a global level, an interplanetary level. You never know he's there until suddenly he's running everything. Elias probably works for _him,_ without knowing it."

"I'd be interested in knowing how you know about Elias," Reese said softly.

The Doctor grinned. "You told me. Will tell me."

"But I thought you said this man was nonexistent," Martha protested.

"Oh, he is. He's both a diversion and an advertisement. As a diversion he keeps people like our Mr. Reese here from seeing what's behind him. As an advertisement, he can sell off your planet piece by piece to the highest bidder, in a hundred years or two."

"And what is behind him?" Finch asked. "I have a feeling it's not something I'm going to be familiar with."

"No, I shouldn't think so. Mobile, Martha."

Martha gave him her cell phone, and he used his fingernails to pull out the SD card and give it to Finch.

"How many pictures did you take, Martha?"

"About ten, from as many angles as I could. But it was just a blank wall."

The Doctor shook his head at her. "Martha, Martha. Use your imagination."

Finch was pulling up a series of pictures of a blank wall. "I have no imagination to use, so you will have to give me a little help."

"Harold, if you had no imagination, how could you have created the Machine and hired John?"

Finch tilted stiffly to look up at him. "How did you know about the Machine?"

"John told me."

"You seem to have told him a great deal, Mr. Reese."

"I told him nothing."

"You will have, it seems."

"What Machine?" Martha asked.

"You don't want to know," Reese said, and though for a moment she seemed inclined to argue, the steady, sober expression in his grey eyes decided her otherwise.

The Doctor was giving Finch instructions on how to manipulate Martha's pictures with light settings. "There!" he said, shooting out a thin finger. "There. Look."

At first it looked like a blank wall, darkened by Finch's PhotoShop, or whatever he used, but after a moment of staring intently, faint markings could be seen, just the barest glow, a great circle with spiky protrusions and wispy lines.

"Oh, I didn't expect _that._ The Mahrood. Now, what are _they_ doing using Geliorg technology? I've never known them to be so subtle. Usually if the Mahrood want to sell a planet that doesn't belong to them, they come and take it over like any decent thug-race. There's got to be someone behind _them._ Well, I suppose there's only one way to find out."

"How?" Finch asked.

"Go and ask."

Reese grinned. A man after his own heart. Alien. An alien after his own heart.


	4. Chapter 4: Finch

**To follow that star**_**__**_

_Finch_

The Doctor's long legs took him to the TARDIS in two strides. He pushed the door open and looked back at Finch with a grin. "Well, are you coming?"

He was so different than the Doctor Finch remembered. So young and eager. So old and desperate. Could one be old and young at the same time? Desperate and alive with eagerness for the next adventure at the same time? Finch had never felt old until after Nathan died and he woke up in the hospital unable to move. And yet to this Doctor he was still a child, a brilliant young afternoon's companion.

He got up from his chair and limped slowly toward the door. Mr. Reese's eyes were popping again. They didn't do missions together. Things worked much better when they each did their own parts, and Finch had no desire to experience the situations Reese got himself into. But he turned back at the door and said deliberately, "Well, are you coming?"

Then, ignoring Reese's popping eyes, he stepped inside the door.

"I _knew_ it was alive," he murmured, gazing with eyes as wide as the child Harold Sparrow's at the first sight of a blue shed that appeared out of nowhere in a whirl of sound.

"You did?" The Doctor was rushing around in circles, pushing, pulling, prodding, and hitting things on the console in the middle of the impossibly large, strangely living room. "Oh, I knew you were brilliant, Harold Sparrow! But she's not an it. She's a she. Close the door, Martha!"

Martha was pulling a chair up the ramp. She tucked it into the closest thing to a corner in the round room. "Wait a minute, Doctor! Mr. Finch, please, have a seat. You'll want to hold on tight. Doctor, please try to keep this thing steady."

"Oh. Right." He hit a few more things, one with a mallet and cried, "Ready?"

Given the way Mr. Reese and Martha were both bracing themselves, it seemed they were in for a rough ride. Finch grasped the rail and closed his eyes, unaware of what an incongruously prim figure he made in that absurd room. "Ready, Doctor."

One might expect a space and time ship from the future to have the technology to deal with turbulence. Finch had reason to be thankful for the chair, and when the shaking and shuddering and wild noise stopped and he opened his eyes, he found Martha beside him.

"Alright, then?"

He took stock. "Yes, thank you, Miss Jones. That was very thoughtful."

She tilted her head. "I know the symptoms of fused vertebrae when I see them. The TARDIS isn't exactly the easiest ride at the best of times."

"Are you a Doctor too?"

"Oh, not like him. Strictly medical. Or will be, if I ever get back to London, 2007, to take my exam." She gave him one of her vibrant smiles. "Come on then, Mr. Finch."

Reese was grinning his quiet, snarky little grin as they all went down toward the door. He liked this different Doctor and his wild ways, Finch could tell and was a little surprised. Illogically pleased, too. He had no desire for his childhood and his present associations to have any meeting at all, and yet it pleased him that Reese liked his Doctor.


	5. Chapter 5: Reese

**No matter how far**

_Reese_

And there they were back in the office. Thirty seconds to go to the other side of the city. Primitive cultures always found more advanced technology to be like magic, Reese told himself, but really, it _was_ like magic. Since meeting Finch—being annexed by Finch—he was a little more inclined to recognize magic in technology. If they'd lived in a world where magic worked instead of electronics, Finch would be a little wizard in a pointy hat and robes unearthing incantations out of ancient books, and Reese—_he_ would be a knight with a sword and a crossbow, slaying dragons. Instead he was hunting aliens with two doctors. There were days when he was quite sure he was still passed out in a drunken stupor in the old warehouse, having wild dreams, because _this_ sort of thing didn't happen to men like him. Men like him ended up putting the muzzle of a pistol in their mouths, not running around with an alien, a doctor, and a weird computer genius and feeling more alive and glad to be than they had in years.

The Doctor put a hand on his wrist. "Will you _please_ leave the gun in your pocket?"

For a moment he wondered if the British alien could read minds. "You do your job and let me do mine. I don't tell you what to do with your sonic screwdriver, do I?"

"It's not a weapon!"

"Sonic. I can think of a lot of things you could do with a sonic device."

Wrong thing to say. For a moment the Doctor's eyes were lost in a past he did not want to think about, and when he returned to the present, his merry face was stretched tight in a way Reese recognized only too well. Between the three of them, he, Finch, and the Doctor, there were more horrific memories than any three men ought to ever have to avoid talking about. Thankfully, he saw no such thing in Martha, whose gladness in life shone in her dark eyes.

Without skipping a beat, Reese continued smoothly, "Speaking of sonic devices, Doctor, I think Finch would love to see yours, if it won't mess up your space-time continuum to let a primitive human look at advanced technology."

"Not at all." The Doctor wiped his bleakness away with a grin. He pulled the screwdriver from his pocket, flipped it around in his hand, and presented it to Finch. Then he scooped up an armful of other devices from the floor of the TARDIS. "Allons'y!"

"What _are_ you carrying?" His hand was never far from his gun, and his eyes continually scanned ahead and behind. The Doctor rolled his eyes when he motioned them behind him at a corner and peered around it before giving the all-clear.

"Well, this is a Krellim particulate condenser, this is an _ashingmefter,_ this measures chronotron radiation, and this is a good, old-fashioned crowbar."

It didn't look like any crowbar he had ever seen. Behind them Finch was keeping up a running commentary on the sonic screwdriver, with a few interruptions from Martha.

"Oh, _that_ setting boils water. Don't ask me why. But I used it on Maringpor when the Jien Mother was giving birth prematurely and the only thing that could save the baby was to pop it into boiling water. Not a lot of boiling water on an ice planet. Of course, as the Doctor told her, it is not very reasonable to try to take over an ice planet when you're eight and a half years pregnant and your baby needs boiling water. She admitted he had a point, but I was the one who saved Maringpor, because she was so grateful she went back home when I asked. The Doctor is _rubbish_ at delivering babies."

"A good thing he had a doctor with him, then," Reese called back over his shoulder.

"Martha Jones, one of the smartest humans I ever met," the Doctor said appreciatively.

Martha smirked.

The party came at last to the famous blank wall. It looked like a blank wall, a very large and menacing blank wall, spanning a whole corridor. The Doctor immediately dropped all his instruments on the floor and went up to it, pressed his ear and hands to it, and listened intently. Then, making little noises of approval, he began running his instruments up and down and to and fro.

"I take it you think this is a door," Finch said.

"I do indeed. But what's behind it, eh? And how to open it? Not with my screwdriver, unfortunately."

"I believe I saw an electrical box of some sort around this corner. It wouldn't be there for no reason. I'll have a look." He limped back the way they had come.

"It could be fused with human technology," the Doctor agreed, "like the hiding of the symbol. Clever, that. How often do you get a team of people who can work this century's technology _and_ Geliorg technology?"

Martha leaned against the wall with a grin. Reese left the doctor to do his thing and patrolled up and down.

"I think I've almost got it," the Doctor kept muttering. "No, never mind. Haven't."

Finch was making the same sorts of noises, which Reese could hear through his earpiece.

They were set upon all at once by three of the German ex-military men. Even Reese had not heard them coming, until their bullets were ricocheting down the corridor around them. In one motion Reese shoved Martha against the wall and shielded her with his body while sending shots after them.

"Finch, stay where you are!"

"I have no intention of moving, Mr. Reese."

He dropped one of the Germans with his third shot, but the Doctor was shouting at him.

"Stop! Stop! We come in peace! We mean no harm!"

Reese shoved him back against the wall next to Martha. "_They _mean harm!"

He sent such a fusillade of bullets after the last two Germans that they had to withdraw around a corner. He set his finger to his lips, glaring at the Doctor, and edged silently to the corner, where he found a German edging quietly on the other side. A brief scuffle, in which the other German could not fire for fear of hitting his companion, resulted in one unconscious German and Reese pursuing the third. He soon caught up with him and fought again.

"Mr. Reese, I'm sorry to interrupt," Finch's cool voice said in his ear, "but I believe I've been shot."


	6. Chapter 6: Finch

**And the world will be better for this**

_Finch_

He hadn't felt it until he found himself sitting on the floor under the electrical box with hot wetness flowing down his right arm. He examined it a moment with interest, as if it didn't belong to him.

_This is shock, probably,_ he decided.

It was not exactly reasonable to interrupt Mr. Reese in the pursuit of his duty, but it occurred to him that if he bled to death, there would be no one to do the more important side of their job. But maybe he already had interrupted him, because he heard through his earpiece the sound of a falling body, footsteps, and Reese shouting, "Martha, leave him! He's dead! Martha! Finch has been shot!"

Hands were tearing at his jacket, vest, shirt. Martha came flying in a blur and shoved Reese away. Now with slim, practiced fingers touching him gently it hurt.

"The shoulder seems such a stereotypical place to be shot," he said to stay on top of the pain. "A ricochet, I imagine?"

"Don't talk," Martha said. "Be thankful it was a ricochet. It didn't go all the way through. If it had, it would have smashed your shoulder blade. Reese, help me get him to the TARDIS. We have to get him to a hospital."

"Not a hospital," he said faintly. "I haven't prepared another identity for a hospital. I never expected to get shot. That's Mr. Reese's purview."

"Haven't prepared an identity?" Martha muttered. "What does that mean? I'll take the bullet out myself, if you insist. The TARDIS has medical supplies. Sorry, this is going to hurt, Mr. Finch."

She pressed cloth to his shoulder, his own jacket, it looked like. That was a good jacket, he thought regretfully. The pain was very great and very distant.

"Mr. Finch, stay awake!" Martha said sharply. "Mr. Reese, if you please."

"You sound like a doctor," he murmured.

"I _am_ a doctor. Almost, and good enough for the present."

Finch clenched his jaw tight and did not make a sound as Reese's strong arm raised him off the floor. Martha kept the jacket pressed hard against his shoulder as they went along. Reese was practically carrying him by the time they came to the office again. The Doctor trailed along behind, for once forgotten.

"There's a room I use back here," Martha said. "Put him on the bed. Keep this on the wound. I'll find the supplies."

The pain went round and round, but he was slightly more used to it by now, and he understood pain anyway. The most disquieting thing was Reese sitting there firmly inside his personal space. He stared up at the fine-drawn face. "As soon as she returns, take the Doctor and get that door open. The empty number came up because there is real danger, and the Doctor believes it could be a danger to the whole planet. The Machine must have calculated that the government is not in a position to stop it and that we are."

Reese nodded, and that was something Finch appreciated, that he would go and do it because he knew how not to be sentimental. People really were so _very_ sentimental.

Martha came flying back, her arms full. "I made the Doctor get these ages ago. He seems to think that because he's immortal, _we_ are. I've had to use them, too, on myself—_and_ on him. So don't you worry, Mr. Finch. There'll be no dying for you today."

"Miss Jones, I know what dying feels like. This is not it."

Reese laughed, but Martha only put her eyebrows up at him. "You do, do you?" She was laying out her instruments, most of which were completely unrecognizable to the man who had spent more than a year of his recent life in hospitals. "Reese, here's what we're going to do—"

"Mr. Reese has work to do. I don't need a nurse."

"If you did, it wouldn't be me," Reese said in his soft tone, the one that meant sarcastic amusement. "He's right, Martha. I'm sorry, but I have more important things to do."

"Nothing's more important than a single human life!" the Doctor suddenly blazed.

"And as Martha said, his life is not in danger, but everyone else's is. Now, come on, Doctor, and leave the doctor to her work."

"Fine. Martha, I'm going to have the TARDIS take you back to Harold's library. We may need his very fine equipment. I'll leave her programmed to return here on your command in case we need a quick getaway. Otherwise we'll take a cab." His mouth spread wide in a grin. "Oh, I have always wanted to take a New York cab!" He started to bolt away and then came back and stared down at Finch with ache in his eyes. "If I had known when I met you, Harold, what I would let happen to you—"

Finch closed his eyes. "If I remember correctly, Doctor, it was a German bullet that hit me, not a Time Lord bullet, and the last time I checked, I am responsible for my choices, not you. Now, will you please go save the world again?"

There was a real smile in the Doctor's voice. "With pleasure, Mr. Finch."


	7. Chapter 7: Reese

**No matter how hopeless_  
><em>**

_Reese_

The Doctor closed the door of the TARDIS with a new heaviness on his shoulders. "Whatever he says, I got him into this," he said as the blue booth (or box, as the Brits said) disappeared.

Reese watched it incredulously and then gave him an understanding look. "I almost got him blown up once. Sent him up against a rapist who was bigger, younger, stronger, and he saved a girl's life. He slips in and out of certain situations as easily as I do. Believe me, we both know what we're getting into when we start a new number." He deactivated his earpiece so Finch would not hear him snooping. "What was he like when you met him?"

"Little Harold Sparrow? Well, it has been six hundred years, but seeing him again brings it all back." He smiled reminiscently. "Well, he was _little._ Looked about seven instead of ten. Thick glasses that made his eyes look huge and hair sticking up—what do you call that hair they all had back in the '50s and '60s? Crew cut? Yes. In fact, almost exactly as he looks now. It's really extraordinary. And the first time I saw him he was doing exactly what he was today: touching my TARDIS like she was talking to him. I always appreciate people who understand her."

"You talk about your time machine as if it's alive."

"Well, she is. In a certain way, she's a sentient creature, but of such a different order from your kind of sentience that you wouldn't be able to recognize it." He stopped as they entered the long corridor again and looked down at the dead German with a mournful expression. "I wish you hadn't killed him."

"I wish I hadn't had to. Help me tie up the other two. I doubt there are more. If there were, they'd be here by now."

They tied them up, and Reese propped them up against the wall opposite the invisible door. The Doctor got to work again, talking busily the while.

"Well, little Harold, he was just staring at me when I came out of the TARDIS, not afraid, hardly even surprised. He said, 'Are you an alien?' and I said, 'Yes,' and he said, 'Have you come to help the Wilsons?' And that was the first I knew of a problem there. I only came because…because Susan wanted to see a little American town. I think she had seen some of the Andy Griffith Show. Brilliant show, by the way." He smiled at Reese as if Reese had invented it.

Reese let a beat pass. "Who was Susan?"

"My…granddaughter." It should have been absurd, coming from such a young man, but it wasn't.

"You're not going to tell me what town Harold lived in, are you?"

"No," the Doctor said gently. "That little boy gave me a fake name at age ten. Any other little boy might have done it because he wanted to be a superhero or a private detective. I don't think that was what motivated Harold."

"He's the most self-protective person I know, even more than I am," Reese said, hardly surprised at the way he felt free to talk to this man. "This is something that's a long time in the making. It would not surprise me to find child-Harold almost as secretive as man-Harold."

"I've come to the conclusion that he wanted to save me for himself. He wouldn't take me—us—home to meet his parents or even tell us where he lived, but he never left our side that whole afternoon. It was as if we had come specifically to be his own imaginary friends. I doubt he had any real imaginary friends. But he knew _everything."_

_ His own imaginary Machine._ "Like he was born for surveillance?"

"Something like that. And a bit like whatever it is that occupies a boy's life at home had little hold on him."

Again Reese was not surprised. He knew about people and the sort of things that happened in their lives to bring them to be the kind of people they were in the present. He doubted there was very much in Finch's background that would actually surprise him.

The Doctor began hopping up and down. "I've got it! I've got it!" He thrust his hand into the inner pocket of his jacket. "Hey! Where's my screwdriver?"


	8. Chapter 8: Finch

**To try when your arms are too weary**

_Finch_

Martha held the compress to Finch's shoulder as the TARDIS went through its upheaval. When it settled she said, "Oi! What's that?"

Finch looked down at the silver and blue instrument clutched tightly in his left hand. "I didn't know I still had that."

"The Doctor won't be happy." She reached out to take it, and he found his fingers would not unclench from around it. She patted his hand. "You just hold onto it, then, while I get to work. First I have a combination of compounds, one to stop the bleeding and one to stop the pain. This stuff is wonderful. It works instantly."

"Have you been shot in your adventures with the Doctor, Miss Jones?"

She chuckled. "No. Bashed my knee open rock climbing on Ngarsh. You can call me Martha, you know."

"I prefer the respect inherent in titles."

"You mean you prefer the distance they create."

Finch hissed in a breath between his teeth as she lift the compress off. Then immediately cool relief spread across his shoulder with the spray from a little canister. That, however, only served to reveal how intensely his back and neck ached. He preferred the gunshot wound, on the whole.

"I'm sorry," Martha said, pulling out something like tweezers. "It's none of my business. I'm just some human from five years ago who dropped into your life uncalled-for."

Finch closed his eyes, because he could still feel her fishing about in his shoulder, even if it didn't hurt. "At the moment, I'm glad you did."

Martha didn't answer, concentrating. After a moment there was a clink. "I've got it. This is not the first time I've dug a bullet out of a wound. We went to Waterloo…"

Finch opened his eyes to see if she was joking. She wasn't.

"Now I've got this binding compound. It takes the place of stitches. It's got this intelligence that will bind muscle to muscle, skin to skin. Just don't ever use it on a Jadar. They don't really _have_ skin. And it will have done in less than a week. You'll be as good as new in a few days."

_You mean as good as broken. But not dying, and that's the thing._ "In that case, if we really are back in my library, perhaps you would help me into my office."

"Oh, no you don't. You are going to bed, not to work."

"No, I am not, Miss Jones. There is still a great deal of work to be done in tracing the extent of this organization, or whatever it is. As dashing and hero-like as Mr. Reese is, my part in this operation is not negligible. In fact it is vital. There is more at stake than the state of a hole in my arm."

Martha spread out her hands, then began taping a bandage to his shoulder. "You're just like the Doctor."

"I am?"

"He would run himself to death to save—well, just about anyone."

Finch nodded at his arm. "This will not kill me. Now, are we done?"

"Be patient. You stay here. I'll be back."

He had no choice but to comply, but this reliance on an overly-sharp doctor was beginning to gall. Reese was bad enough, but at least he wasn't a mother hen.

Martha returned with a long strip of cloth which she fashioned into a sling. The shoulder was beginning to hurt again, and this time it worked in concord with his back instead of masking it. He gritted his teeth as Martha lifted him up with practiced hands, slipped his shirt over one arm and around the other, and helped him up off the bed. By the time they got out through the TARDIS, Martha could feel him trembling. She put him into a fat, brown leather chair that had mysteriously appeared in front of his desk.

"It's more than the wound. Is it your back?"

"Yes."

"Do you have something to take for it?"

"Anything you can think of, but I need to be clear-headed, Miss Jones."

"Oh, and excruciating pain is going to help, is it?"

"Sometimes it does. Just let me sit here a moment." He closed his eyes.

Her footsteps stalked away. Presently they came back again. He heard the sound of something hot being poured.

"Drink this, Mr. Finch."

He opened his eyes. She was holding out a steaming mug.

"What is it?"

"My prescription and the prescription of every Englishwoman: a nice cup of tea."

He couldn't help the smile that pushed his mouth sideways. "I don't drink black tea."

"You do today. It has sugar in it you need. And don't say you don't take sugar in tea. Doctor's orders."

"I do. But not as much as you have probably put in." He found his unwounded hand would obey him now and set the sonic screwdriver on the arm of the chair, reached out for the tea. He drank it slowly. It was hot, over-sweet, and good. Martha had sat down in his usual chair and was drinking her own. "Where did this chair come from?"

"TARDIS, same as the tea. I think eventually you can find everything in there. It goes on forever, just about. Mr. Finch, tell me about Susan."

"I should have thought you could tell me, Miss Jones. I knew her once in an afternoon when I was ten. I was never companion to her grandfather."

She shook her head. "He won't talk about most of his former companions. Especially Rose, and Susan, and Romana. But I've seen a picture of Susan, and she looks…special. Rather wonderful."

"She was. She looked like…Audrey Hepburn. A sort of awkward, graceful, dark, gamine creature. She knew everything. At least I thought she did. And maybe she did. Maybe she was a hundred years old. But she looked not much older than I, and she knew all these words and how to fly a spacecraft, and she always understood what her grandfather was saying. They had a kind of partnership I never knew an adult could have with a child. I had always thought but never understood that a child could be as intelligent as an adult."

"And you were, weren't you? More than any of the adults you knew."

"Of course. But a child is not allowed to think that."

Martha's lips curled in a grin. "You liked her, didn't you?"

"Who?"

"Oh, don't say _who._ Susan. You liked her!"

"I was a child, and she was an alien. There is no more to say about that, or her."

Seeming to recognize that he meant it, she fell silent. She took his mug when it was empty. He wasn't sure if it had helped the pain or not.

"Thank you," he said.

Martha smiled, leaned over, and kissed him gently. Finch blinked his pale eyes at her.

"Why did you do that, Miss Jones?"

"Because you're sweet."

"No, I'm not. Oh—" His brain seemed to falter. "Um, Miss Jones, I—ah, appreciate your…but I don't—"

"Oh no! No! Sorry." She laughed. "No. That should be a rule. Don't go kissing people if you don't mean what it usually means." She sighed, muttered, "That should have been a rule a long time ago." She caught his eye. "Yeah, the Doctor—he—genetic transfer. Not a good idea."

"You have an odd bedside manner, Dr. Jones."

"It's not exactly regulation. I won't tell if you don't. Anyway, I'm not a doctor yet." She sat back in her seat, her bright eyes slightly melancholy. "I've still got a test waiting for me. Just waiting, stuck forever in May 2007. I have a whole life there. Family, work, school. I _like_ it. I've wanted to be a doctor my whole life. And instead I'm exploring space and time with an alien. It's _brilliant._ I could go on like this forever. I don't ever want to stop, really. But—"

Finch reached out his pale hand and took her slim dark hand. "Miss Jones, if you have a life of your own—family, good friends, work that is meaningful to you, don't let _anything_ take you away from it. Anything, Miss Jones. You'll never know what it means to you until you've lost it and it's too late."

Martha stared at him, and it almost seemed like there would be tears in her eyes. He dropped her hand.

"Now, if you would be so good as to give me my keyboard and mouse—"

"Oh, no. That's what I'm here for. You tell me what to do. I'm an excellent typist, and I'm good with computers."

"I can't work with _you_ typing!"

"Yes, you can. How do you think Stephen Hawking does it?"

"Stephen Hawking writes books, not code."

"Well, you're not typing with that arm, and that's final. We do it this way, or you go back to bed."

Finch glared. Martha glared back. Finally he held out his left hand.

"At least let me have the mouse."

"Alright, you can have the mouse." She took a large book from a shelf and put it on his lap with his wireless mouse. "Now, tell me what to do."


	9. Chapter 9: Reese

**To be willing to march into Hell for a heavenly cause**

_Reese_

Reese reactivated his earpiece. "Finch, we're in."

He was relieved to hear Finch's voice sounding strong. "Good. Keep me informed."

"Ask if Martha and the TARDIS are taking good care of him," the Doctor ordered.

"Did you hear that, Finch?"

"I did. Excellent good, i'faith."

"What?"

"Shakespeare, Mr. Reese. Do you ever read?"

"What has she been giving you?"

"Only tea, as far as I can tell. Tell the Doctor I have his sonic screwdriver."

"Doctor, Finch has your screwdriver. If you're not careful, he may keep it forever."

"I did not intend to make off with it. Tell me where you are, Mr. Reese."

"Not sure. It's very dark. A series of corridors."

"I'm looking at blueprints for the building, as well as satellite images of the heat signatures in the building."

"That's impressive."

"I own the satellite, Mr. Reese. Tell me the direction you have come."

"We entered, went to the right, jogged left, and have been jogging left ever since. There's a little light coming from somewhere, and it's slightly hazy. Not smoke."

"You should be coming out soon into a large space. There's a lot of heat concentrated there. Equipment, perhaps."

Reese heard Martha speaking in the background and then, "I'm putting you on speakerphone, Mr. Reese, so Miss Jones can hear your updates. I expect she would rather be with you."

He heard Martha very clearly: "Shut up, Mr. Finch," and he was hard-pressed to suppress a burst of laughter.

Now they had come into the large space Finch described, and it was like nothing he had ever seen before. All very hazy and blue, there were niches and booths in glass and metal set into three walls with cords and tubes snaking from one to another, and it looked very much like there were people in the booths, standing flat against the wall, just standing.

"Oh…" the Doctor said. He stood in the middle of the room, his hands hanging limply at his sides. "Of course."

"Mr. Reese, tell me what you are seeing."

"I—I don't know. I'll send you pictures." He took out his cell phone and began snapping pictures, first of the whole room, then the booths, then the faces inside them. "They look human to me, but then, the Doctor looks human to me."

"They are human," the Doctor said, strangely subdued. Reese could feel whatever it was that was dampening him. There was a heaviness in the room.

"I'm running comparisons with missing persons reports. Send me as many pictures as you can, Mr. Reese."

"I—"

"Oh—" Finch's voice choked. "Some of these are some of mine. My numbers. From—over a year ago. Before your time. They're…anyone. A student, a homeless veteran, a tourist from Detroit—people who easily get lost in New York. They all came up within a month of each other, and I…could do nothing. But there are others the Machine never sent me. Why? Ask the Doctor if he knows what this place is for."

"Oh, yes, I know," the Doctor said when Reese pushed through the engulfing heaviness enough to ask. "I should have realized! It's not the Mahrood or the Geliorg! It's the Cretana, and they don't want the _planet._ They want the _people._ Humans, the perfect slave race, but only if your vibrant brains are subdued. This is _their_ Machine, run by human brains and bodies. The humans are the equipment. That's right, isn't it?" he shouted into the air. "How long ago did you come here? Ten years? All you had to do was start up the Machine and ensnare one little person, some homeless person no one would miss, and then you could leave and let it develop itself. He gave it enough energy to reach out and snare a few more, and they would give it enough energy for a larger number. How do you bring them in? Curiosity? Adverts online? Kidnappings by your brainwashed Germans? False identities to draw men like Reese? And then the danger to Reese to draw _me…_ Oh, you are clever. Because you had to move up your time table, didn't you? Were the humans proving more resistant than you thought? Because they're like that. Somehow, sometime, they'll _always_ break out. You can't keep humans down forever.

"So you needed me. At this rate you could send out your brainwashing net across the entire globe in about a hundred years, but with _me_ you could do it in a couple hours! And then you'll have a whole subdued race to sell, and a nice planet, too. That's what you did to the Kriller."

Reese realized he had been hearing Finch saying, "Mr. Reese, get out of there!" for about a minute now. But the Doctor swung slowly toward him.

"I'm sorry, John. It was a trap. We were caught the moment we entered this room. Before that there was a chance to get out, but no, we had to _investigate."_

Reese was walking toward an empty booth. He had dropped his phone on the floor. Finch was still in his ear.

"Mr. Reese, what are you doing?"

He stood in front of the booth. He knew he was going to get into it. Part of his brain screamed at him to run, but the rest was very calmly preparing to get into the booth.

The Doctor stood beside him in front of his own. He had been humming for a moment. Now he started talking again, weakly.

"But what did I tell you about humans? You learned to exploit all their weaknesses. Look at Reese here. You've suppressed his decision-making ability and made him _want_ to surrender. You saw that humans tend to do what they want, didn't you? And what they _don't_ want is to feel pain. They spend billions of pounds and dollars every year to be rid of pain. You had to weed out the weak from the strong somehow. This planet is _full_ of diseases and injury and death. No one wants a chronically ill slave. So you filtered for pain, didn't you? The child with cancer in the hospital—you don't want_ her._ The computer programmer with a fused spine and chronic pain—you don't want _him._ You don't want the weak, and you can afford to leave them, because they don't fight. Someone who was shot today for the first time is not going to come rushing in like a superhero to save the day. That's why your brainwashing field won't work on someone like that, because he's negligible. Humans don't see pain as an asset. That's what you thought, isn't it?"

He hummed again, his hands pressed against the sides of the booth to keep his body from getting into it. "Well, you're wrong. Apparently in all your research you never read the human author Tolkien. You only saw the outer behaviors; you've missed out on the inner core of what makes them _human._ Where humans are weak is where they are strong. They _do_ look to the strongest and handsomest to be their heroes—until they see that heroism has nothing to do with body type. They _do_ run away from pain—until they don't. So I'll get into your little booth, because I can't help it, and then I'll watch a weak, pain-filled human rescue me." He hummed again.

Reese stepped into the booth, and there was sweet oblivion.


	10. Chapter 10: Finch

**Still strove with his last ounce of courage**

_Finch_

"Mr. Reese? _Mr. Reese."_

The answer was all silence. The Doctor's humming had hung in the background, and now it was gone.

"Doctor! Doctor!" Martha shouted, relieving Finch of the need to. He was suddenly very tired.

"We've got to go help them!" she cried, leaping up from her chair. Finch caught her arm with his left hand and held it fast.

"You are not going anywhere, Miss Jones."

"Finch!"

"Did you hear what the Doctor said? A chronically-injured, recently-shot computer programmer, not a perfectly healthy young doctor."

"_You? You're_ the one who's not going anywhere—"

"Miss Jones." He put steel in his quiet voice. "Be quiet. I need a moment to think, and then you will follow my directions. Is it understood?"

Martha nodded.

He sat for a moment and thought. Then he said, "Miss Jones, let me have your phone. Go to that cabinet and remove one of the laptops. Open the drawer there and take out one of the earpieces you will find. Put it in your ear. I have force-paired our phones, and we will hear everything the other says. This laptop is configured as a remote unit of my equipment here. Take it with you. I wonder if a time vortex will affect the signal. We'll just have to find out. Will you go down that hallway, turn left, turn right, and fetch me a new shirt and jacket from the closet you will find?"

Like a good battlefield doctor, Martha obeyed without question. While she was gone, Finch picked up the sonic screwdriver and put it in his right hand, reached out for his cane, closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and forced himself up out of his chair. For a moment he stood clutching the cane while waves of pain and nausea went through him, but presently he found himself able to walk the few steps to the TARDIS, open the door, and go in.

He went slowly up the ramp in the room that looked like the interior of a living thing and reached out to rest against the console. "I wonder if you can help me," he murmured to the Police Box. "I want to help your…master, or friend, or whatever he is to you."

When Martha rushed in with clothing and the laptop, he was leaning there, his eyes closed and his face ashen.

"Mr. Finch!"

"I am quite alright. You need to give the command for the TARDIS to take us back to where the Doctor is."

"You can't possibly walk all the way from the office to that corridor!"

"No, I can't. Please give the order."

"Not yet. You're sitting down for this."

She helped him back into the chair he had occupied before, knelt beside him, put one arm behind his shoulders and the other hand on his good shoulder, forcing him back against her, and said, "TARDIS, take us to the Doctor."

Immediately the TARDIS began its heaving and whirling, and Finch had reason to be thankful for a human to jolt against instead of a hard wall. When everything settled, he opened his eyes and smiled faintly. "You will be a very good doctor, Miss Jones."

"Thank you, Mr. Finch!"

"Is there some way to look outside without going outside?"

"Yes, there's a view-thingie." She got up and ran to the other side of the console. "We're in the room Reese described! I can see the people—can't tell who's the Doctor, though. How did you know she would take us here?"

"I think she told me."

"She _talked_ to you?"

"No. I can't imagine she knows words. But I knew things. She seems to know how to leak into minds."

"That's true. She has got a psychic field, or something."

"Of course she does. Would you be so kind as to remove this sling and help me put on my shirt and jacket? And, Miss Jones, do not bother to be delicate and gentle. The more it hurts, the better, according to the Doctor."

"Oh, I hate him." She unwound the sling and lowered his arm to rest on his leg.

"He—is not to blame for—what aliens have done," he said, trying to breathe steadily.

"I know. And I don't really. The opposite, actually."

She pulled the pale blue shirt up over his arm, very gently over his shoulder, and helped him with the other arm, buttoned the sleeves and the front, leaving the top button undone, and did the same over again with the brown jacket with thin blue stripes. At one point Finch thought he was going to pass out, but he didn't. She finished with retying the sling. Finch put the sonic screwdriver into his right hand again and took his cane in hand.

"Now, listen to me, Miss Jones. Do not follow me. The moment you step out of this TARDIS, you'll go put yourself straight into a booth and will lose your usefulness to me. So don't let misguided bravery make you foolish. I want you to use the laptop to find a way to burn this building down. If I fail, you will burn it down with all of us inside."

"No, I won't."

"Yes, you will. Unless you wish the human race to die a much slower death as a race of brainwashed slaves, you will."

"I'll shoot _myself_ in the arm and come rescue you first."

Finch's lopsided, oddly sweet smile went across his face. "No doubt. If you need backup, I have programmed your phone with the number of a police officer Mr. Reese trusts."

"Meaning you don't?"

"I don't trust anyone."

"Not even Reese?"

"Not even myself."

Martha kissed his cheek. "_I_ trust you. You won't fail."


	11. Chapter 11: Finch

**To run where the brave dare not go**

_Finch_

Finch went slowly out of the TARDIS as he had gone in, an awkward figure leaning heavily on his cane. He rarely used it anymore, partly out of stubbornness, partly because pain reminded him of the guilt that drove him, but now that pain was the important thing, he clutched it for support, because without it he knew he would fall over.

He closed the door firmly behind him, purposefully pulling it slightly harder than necessary and accepting the resulting ripple of pain. If the Doctor was right—and he was the sort of man who tended to be—only pain was going to keep him alive, or sane, or whatever it was. Pain with a point. Reese had said something about that once, about pain with a point being more endurable than pain without one. There was a certain logic to that.

He looked around the massive room. The mist filling it gave it quite a ghostly look, all twilight blue. What was the mist? Was it actually the field that the Doctor called a brainwashing field? There was no reason that an alien field should not be visible, though no reason that it should, either. Nevertheless, if it was involved in this human-powered Machine, it ought to be shut down. But first he needed to find out about the booths.

Reese would have gone straight to one of them and torn it apart until he had got the person out. But by the look of all the tubes and cords, it seemed that the people were probably connected to their booths with a sort of life-support system, which was logical, given that some of them had been here over a year. It could be dangerous to just yank them out. He had to try to figure out how they worked. Since Reese and the Doctor were the most recently put in, they might be the safest to try to get out.

"Mr. Finch? Are you alright?"

"Yes. Yes, I am, Miss Jones. Just taking stock of the situation. It would be useful to have another person. I am not used to doing it all myself."

"I could shoot myself in the arm and come help."

Finch actually laughed. "I haven't reached that level of desperation yet."

"You don't feel anything? No sudden urge to climb into a booth in the wall?"

"Not at all. I feel…radiation in my back and a bullet in my shoulder. I would never have thought to be thankful for that."

"I know. Just let me know if you need anything."

"Thank you, Miss Jones."

He limped along the line of booths—_Like coffins,_ he couldn't stop himself from thinking—peering into the faces until he found Reese and the Doctor next to him. He had passed several of his numbers along the way. Now Reese and the Doctor were two more of his numbers.

"A tricorder would be useful just now, when faced with unfamiliar alien technology," he muttered. "Miss Jones, does the Doctor have any sensor-type equipment in the TARDIS?"

"Yes, but all the readouts are in Gallifreyan, and they don't translate."

"How useful."

"I'll have to talk to him about getting some in English."

"Not a bad idea."

He took the sonic screwdriver awkwardly in his left hand and flipped through the few settings Martha had told him about. As he did, something warm went through his mind. He gasped.

"Mr. Finch?"

Deliberately he reached over and touched his shoulder until it made him gasp again.

"_Mr. Finch?"_

"I'm alright."

He held up the screwdriver again, and the golden warmth went through his mind again. With it was knowledge.

"I know how to use this."

"What?"

"The screwdriver. I know how to use it. I think the TARDIS is teaching me."

"What is it with you?"

"What do you mean?"

"I've traveled on the TARDIS for…oh, a year or something, and all _you_ do is touch it and she's suddenly talking to you?"

"I cannot account for it."

He set to work, doing what he knew how to do, investigating a thing of technology to learn about and figure out how to hack it. After a while he realized he could hear music.

"Miss Jones, what is that?"

"Oh, sorry. It's the music the Doctor was humming. It sounded familiar, so I used one of your programs to identify the tune and find a clip on the internet."

He tilted his head approvingly. "Well thought, Miss Jones. What is it?"

"It's from a musical, 'The Man of La Mancha."

"Don Quixote?"

"Ah—yes, that's right. Here's Peter O'Toole singing it."

Peter O'Toole was singing in his ear, a slightly shaky but rich old-man voice, singing stoutly and with conviction.

To dream the impossible dream  
>To fight the unbeatable foe<br>To bear with unbearable sorrow  
>To run where the brave dare not go<p>

To right the unrightable wrong  
>To love pure and chaste from afar<br>To try when your arms are too weary  
>To reach the unreachable star<p>

This is my quest  
>To follow that star<br>No matter how hopeless  
>No matter how far<p>

To fight for the right  
>Without question or pause<br>To be willing to march into Hell  
>For a heavenly cause<p>

And I know if I'll only be true  
>To this glorious quest<br>That my heart will lie peaceful and calm  
>When I'm laid to my rest<p>

And the world will be better for this  
>That one man, scorned and covered with scars<br>Still strove with his last ounce of courage  
>To reach the unreachable star<p>

"How…peculiar of the Doctor."

"Rather appropriate, don't you think, Mr. Finch?"

"Perhaps."

"I love Peter O'Toole. He was so dishy as Lawrence of Arabia. I didn't know he played Don Quixote, though."

She played it again. At the end, Finch said, "I believe I have figured out how these booths work, as life support systems. They must be more, though. They must take energy in some way as well as giving life support. I will have to find the machinery that runs the booths and creates the field."

"Do you think you can figure it out?"

"I have no idea."

"How is your shoulder?"

"Very much present."

"I don't know whether to say 'good' to that or not."

"A great deal of this is counter-intuitive to a doctor."

"Yes, well, I've learned about dealing with the counter-intuitive with the Doctor. Mr. Finch, what are you doing?"

He wished he could stop the slight sounds of pain his movements caused. "Examining the wiring. It must go somewhere, and that is where I must go."

"You're crawling around on the floor behind the booths, aren't you?"

"Yes."

"I wish I could come do that part for you."

"It is only because you are physically able to do it that you can't."

"It's just so _wrong."_

"Is there anything about humans being kidnapped for slaves that is right?"

"No," she said softly.

"You do know that aliens are not the only ones doing that, don't you? There are vast numbers of slaves in New York City at this moment. If I succeed in dismantling this machine and saving this city, some of the humans I save will go on to enslave others."

Martha was silent a moment. "Why do you do it, Mr. Finch?"

He rose to his feet and stood breathing hard. "Because an unfeeling machine I once built for the intellectual satisfaction of it taught me I had a conscience, Miss Jones. Every day numbers paraded past me, the Social Security numbers of people the government considered unimportant, a silent holocaust of invisible humanity. When I watched the first one die without having even tried to do something about it, I knew that could never happen again. Miss Jones, I have found a door in the wall. This screwdriver really is extremely useful. _Oh—"_

"Mr. Finch? _Mr. Finch?"_

"It is another room, Miss Jones, and it is also filled with booths. These are empty, though. Waiting for more energy sources. I think—yes, I can open the two rooms up to create one room. That will make it easier to keep an eye on the occupied booths."

"Mr. Finch, I hate to hurry you, but the Doctor said he would provide enough energy for the whole planet to be converted in a couple of hours."

"I know. That is why if I don't find an answer soon, you must do what I told you."

Martha was silent.

"If it makes you feel any better, I am sure I can find a way to deactivate the life support before the fire."

"You mean you'll kill them instead of me."

"Yes."

"How can you say that so _calmly?"_

"Because calmness is the only way I have to deal with what it feels like, Miss Jones. Have you ever performed triage?"

"Yes. Waterloo, remember?"

"The battlefield is not the place to agonize over decisions. Ah, I believe I have found what I need. Have you?"

"There's a—" Her voice trembled. "There's a generator in the basement of the building. Can you do anything with that?"

"Yes. I can talk you through creating a power surge through all the electrical systems in the building. Fires will start on all floors."

"You can do that with a _laptop?"_

"Miss Jones, I do not think you really want to know how connected everything in this world really is. But, yes, I can. Let me work here first."

The computerized console he had found was surprisingly human-looking. Perhaps it was meant to be run by a brainwashed human. He couldn't help feeling slightly akin to these monstrous aliens who sat far back removed from the scene of action and let their captives do all the legwork.

_Mr. Reese is not my captive. Not…literally._

With sudden astonishment, he realized he could read what the computer was telling him, and yet it was in a peculiar, twisted script he had never seen before. "Miss Jones, when you said Gallifreyan doesn't translate, does it mean other languages do?"

"Yes, the TARDIS translates for you in your mind."

"That is very accommodating of her."

He reached up and untied the sling, tossed it aside, and held his right wrist in his left hand as he flexed his fingers, pressing his lips together tightly. Then he went to work in the environment that was like his brain's home, the language of a computer.

"Mr. Finch, what are you doing?"

"Typing, Miss Jones."

"If you reopen your wound—"

"Then you will have to fix me again later. The booths are beginning to look tempting." They weren't really, but he needed to keep her mind on the bigger picture, and he did not want her to know how intensely the pain was swirling around.

After a subdued silence, Martha said, "Mr. Finch, can I ask you a question?"

"I have no capacity to prevent you from saying anything you wish to say, Miss Jones. Whether I will answer the question is another matter."

Her voice smiled. "I love the way you talk. The question is, why Harold Sparrow?"

"What do you mean?"

"Why did you choose the name Harold Sparrow?"

"Oh." He was silent a moment, wondering if he would answer. Finally he made a deliberate decision. "It was nondescript. In 1960s America, no one noticed the name Harold. Sparrow was perhaps more unusual, and yet no one notices sparrows, either. They are the most common and unnoticed of birds. They are easily discounted. The only times in my life I have ever felt truly safe have been when I have been unnoticed or discounted."

Martha didn't say anything for a long moment. He hoped it wasn't tears he heard in her voice when she said, "Is that why you never went in the TARDIS when the Doctor invited you? _He_ noticed you. He remembered you for six hundred years, Mr. Finch."

"Perhaps… But I had a false name. It was protection, my invisibility cloak."

There was a choke in her laugh. "Have you been reading _Harry Potter,_ Mr. Finch?"

That question he did not answer.

"I'm sorry—I hope I'm not being a distraction."

The distraction was purely welcome. "Having worked with Mr. Reese for a number of months now, I am used to a voice in my ear while I'm working."

"Don't tell me _he's_ chatty?"

"Surprisingly so."

With a combination of his own considerable skills and the TARDIS translation of the alien language—and perhaps more: perhaps the alien computer language and the technology structure as well (he couldn't tell if it was so intuitive because it had been integrated with human technology or because he had a tiny bit of the TARDIS in his mind)—he worked his way past the human interface and into the system that controlled—or was controlled by—the human slaves. _And to think that only a few hours ago we were investigating a businessman named Nobunori Vincenzo._

"Miss Jones, I am ready to give you your instructions."

Her voice trembled. "Mr. Finch, if we are going to kill a bunch of people together, including the Doctor and your friend, you're going to have to call me by my name."

He paused, tilting his head. "Dr. Jones, if the time comes that we perform triage on this planet together, I will call you by your name."

"In that case, I hope you never do."

"I want you to prep your instruments now."

"Yes, Doctor," she said automatically, then laughed. "I mean—"

"I know what you mean. Please follow my instructions precisely."

Perhaps a medical student was the perfect person to have to talk through a tricky hacking procedure. She knew how to follow instructions, knew how to deal with the intricate details, knew how to obey without complaining or questioning. In some ways computer server, and electrical systems were not unlike the systems of the body, which she knew intimately. And the Doctor had been right about this Martha Jones: she was brilliant.

Thanks to their experience earlier with Martha typing the code Finch dictated, the work went more quickly than he would have thought. At last they had a connection that would allow Martha to create an overload in the generator with a short sequence of keystrokes.

"Now, Miss Jones, I will try to turn off these machines. Please stand by."

Sometimes when he worked there was a place he would go where it seemed like he was the code, was the signal shooting through wires. It was like that when he built the Machine. Sometimes Nathan would come in and jokingly ask if he'd been working all night, and he would realize he hadn't known it had been night. He had not been there since Nathan died, but now, with the TARDIS's warmth in his head, he was there, and he knew what to do.

"Mr. Finch?"

He didn't know how long it had been. "Miss Jones?"

"I've been watching on the screen. It looks like the mist is disappearing."

He looked around the room. "So it is. I hope that is a good thing. I have been working on finding a way to release the life support systems naturally, but I cannot account for what it might do to the captives. I have no choice. I must try to release them no matter what the consequences."

"I know. Do it, Mr. Finch."

He worked again, intensely. And then it was done. He stood back, realized he had been standing for what seemed like a very long time, and sank slowly onto his knees. He leaned his head against his cane.

"Mr. Finch?"

"Miss Jones, you're needed."

Silence. Then laughter. "Are you quoting 'The Avengers'* now? Mr. Finch, you're a never-ending source of surprise."

"My sole goal in life. Miss Jones, I believe I have come to the point where I can open the booths. I believe I have eliminated the brainwashing field, but I can't be sure. When the booths open, I don't know whether the people will come out, whether they will try to go right back in, whether they will die—I know nothing. And I will not be able to help them."

Silence fell again. He breathed slowly, in and out. The cane his head was resting against was trembling, and he wasn't sure why. Hands raised his head and pulled one eyelid open, tested his pulse at his neck, pulled his jacket away from his arm.

"You're bleeding again, Mr. Finch."

"Two jackets ruined," he murmured. "Miss Jones, I did say I was not entirely sure the field was gone."

"I know." She held out her arm. A bandage was wrapped around it, and the blood on her coffee skin was still wet. "I cut myself. _Not_ something I tend to do, so don't look at me like that. I thought, given what I need to do, it would be better than shooting myself. Anyway, there's nothing to shoot myself with on the TARDIS."

"I doubt a cut on the arm would be enough to deter the brainwashing."

"Not even a four-inch one? Well, probably not, but maybe it'll be enough to counter any lasting effects, if it hasn't fully dissipated. Now, Mr. Finch, your job is done."

"Don't run ahead of yourself, Miss Jones. We will create a plan of action first. When I enter the final command, the booths will open slowly, and the people will be released slowly. You must try to get them all into the TARDIS. I wish I could help, but I can't. Try to get Mr. Reese and the Doctor out first."

"Why, Mr. Finch, are you advocating sentimentality?"

"No. You must get the Doctor out because without him the machine has very little power. And if you can bring Mr. Reese to consciousness, he can help you. He has a quick reaction time and hopefully will recover quickly and be able to help. The rest of the people have been in the machine for too long and may not even be able to move."

Martha nodded.

"The moment we are all aboard, we will start the fire and get away."

"I don't know how to fly the TARDIS."

"I think she may be able to fly herself. Or perhaps the Doctor will be recovered enough to do it."

"Are you an optimist, Mr. Finch?"

"I—do not know. I shouldn't think so. And, Miss Jones?"

"Yes, Mr. Finch?"

"Don't forget the Germans."

"The Germans?"

"The two men Mr. Reese left tied up outside the door."

"Oh! I forgot about them."

He only raised his eyebrow. "Are you ready, Miss Jones?"

"So long as I can stop sitting around, I'm ready for anything."

"A woman of action. Well, someone has to be."

Martha rolled her eyes. "Come along, Mr. Finch. It's into the TARDIS with you."

Not arguing was an immense physical relief. He let her lift him up from the floor, hold him up as he entered the last command into the computer, support him into the TARDIS, and put him down into his chair. But when she started to pull his jacket and shirt back to get at his shoulder, he pushed her hand aside.

"There is no time. Go, please."

She plunked the laptop down onto his lap. "It's ready for you."

"Thank you."

Martha put her hands on either side of his face and stared fiercely at him. She could look very fierce. "Don't pass out."

"I have no intention of doing so. Go, Miss Jones."

She ran away down the ramp and out of the TARDIS.

* * *

><p><strong>*<em>Not<em> Marvel's Avengers. The British "Avengers," with John Steed and Emma Peel.**


	12. Chapter 12: Reese

**To bear with unbearable sorrow**

_Reese_

An eternity of still, silent blankness was not enough. There was no pain here, no guilt, no memories, no heaviness forever weighing him down. There was nothing…

A face. Jessica. A faint weight in the empty mist.

An instinct. Fight. Disquiet in the long, deep quiet.

A name. Reese. With it the weight of memory and self-hatred. They flooded in, the memories and identity-less identity. The kind nothingness fought them and crumbled, and when it did, he felt for the first time its deception.

_You can't take away my responsibility for what I've done! What am I without it?_

Then he fought the mist and pushed his way out of it and fell face-first on a cold floor.

He lay panting, unable to move until, at last, he forced himself over onto his back. Near him a figure—vaguely familiar—was struggling to support another vaguely familiar figure. They disappeared from his blurred and dazed vision. A rush of movement, his head being lifted, coolness on his face.

"Mr. Reese! Mr. Reese? Can you hear me? Do you understand me? Can you move? It's Martha. Martha Jones."

"Martha?" he mumbled. "What—?"

"Please, Reese! Listen to me! I need your help! This building is going to burn down. There are people to be saved. Do you understand me?"

"Yes—yes—" Reese struggled to sit up, snatched the wet cloth out of her hand and buried his face in it. The coolness sent a shock through his dazed brain. "Where—tell me what to do—"

"Can you see the booths? You're in shock—can you see them?"

"Yes—" They were all open doors, and he could see people, some standing inside, some falling out as he had done, some already on the floor. Now he remembered them.

"We need to help these people into the TARDIS."

"Alright. I understand."

He struggled up, staggered a moment with dizziness, and the immediately bent down to the nearest person. It was a girl, long blond hair straggling on the floor. There was a college student, he remembered. He lifted her up and carried her to the TARDIS. Behind him Martha was supporting a grizzled man who could barely put his feet to the floor.

Reese deposited the girl on the floor of the TARDIS and turned to rush out again, but a cool voice caught him.

"Detective Carter, contact Mount Sinai Hospital and let them know they are going to have a rush of about thirty kidnapping victims in the ER. Some of them will need life support. Then contact the fire department nearest the hospital and let them know that a building near them is about to burn down. Call it an anonymous tip. You will want to send someone to the hospital to take statements. Goodbye."

Finch, sitting cool as anything in a chair in the TARDIS, laptop on knees and cell phone in hand. Some things never changed.

"Did you let Martha do all the work?" Reese asked.

"No, we saved some for you. I suggest you hurry, Mr. Reese."

He hurried, and as he did he realized he'd seen blood soaking Finch's sleeve again.

Now he'd regained his balance, he could help two people at once, if he didn't have to absolutely carry them. His third time in, he saw a brown-suited figure struggling to sit up on the TARDIS floor. His fourth time in, the Doctor was leaning heavily against the console. His fifth time in, a brown streak overtook him and the Doctor was in the room before him, dragging a turbaned, bearded man across the floor. The three of them brought all the people into the TARDIS and somehow managed to find room for them all on the floor, and then Martha ran madly around looking in all the booths.

"Empty!" she cried. "Come on!" She shoved them into the TARDIS and slammed the door closed. "Doctor, please! Where, Mr. Finch?"

"Sinai Hospital." Finch sounded odd.

"Sinai Hospital, Doctor!" She flew across the room to Finch and grabbed the laptop from him; he did not protest. Her fingers flew across it. "There. No triage necessary, Mr. Finch!"

Reese watched in astonishment as she threw her arms around his little partner, but then he realized why as the TARDIS's first lurch sent him sprawling across the rail. As soon as the time machine settled, she was up again.

"Help me, Mr. Reese!"

He, she, and the Doctor unloaded thirty-two people into the bewildered but efficient arms of the hospital staff. Just as he was carrying out the last person, the blond college student, he saw Detective Carter getting out of a car. She stood and stared at him. He tipped her a sarcastic smile and turned back, wishing he could see her face when she saw the strange blue telephone booth disappear.

When the TARDIS landed again, no one got out. Reese, the Doctor, Martha, and Finch all sat and stared at each other. Martha, for one, looked exhausted, as well she should, after all that. Then suddenly she squealed and attacked the Doctor with a hug. He hugged her back with his biggest grin.

"Miss Jones."

Martha broke instantly away from the Doctor, who looked astonished. "Yes, Mr. Finch?"

"You're needed."

"Reese, help me!"

Together they caught Finch before he had entirely fallen out of his chair and carried him back to the room with the bed. This time Reese did everything Martha told him to, including fetching a truly impressive array of painkillers from a bathroom in Finch's library, while she patched him up again.

"What has he been doing to himself? I thought you did all this before."

"Oh, nothing," she said in an annoyed tone. "Only standing, walking, crawling, typing, planning, hacking, and generally saving your life, the Doctor's life, all those people's lives, and, incidentally, the whole planet, and doing everything you're _not_ supposed to do when you've just been shot and have a chronic back injury, all without pain medication, _on purpose, _while _you've_ been having a nice nap, Mr. Reese!"

"Did he _really?"_ the Doctor said, in that tone of voice he had that seemed to have found the most wonderful thing in the world. "Oh, I knew he would!"

Martha turned on him with a flash in her eyes and then suddenly stopped. "For a little while, he was as magnificent as you, Doctor. Now, you two are having checkups."

"Oh, we're fine, aren't we, John?"

Martha put her finger in his face. "Do not argue with your doctor!"

They had checkups and a prescription of rest, food, and tea, which they took while she patched up a mysterious cut on the back of her arm and told them the whole story. Perhaps not the whole story, Reese decided, because what was missing was all the things that can't be told to explain why two people suddenly have a rapport they didn't have a few hours ago, why Martha gravitated as naturally to Finch as to the Doctor, why she touched him with the tenderness of a care-giving relative instead of the detached professionalism of a doctor, and, above all, why he let her, once he woke up. An hour of shared danger, he knew, can bring people closer together than months of casual acquaintance. Martha had had to trust Finch implicitly in a time when a misstep could mean the end of the world, and Finch had had to allow himself to rely on her utterly in order to be free to work. Reese couldn't help wondering if this single night's work would change the way his employer—partner—friend dealt with the world.

"And _that," _Martha concluded, "is the first time I've ever seen you get rescued by a human without doing a thing to help, Doctor. Usually you're the big hero."

"Being a hero is easy, Martha. Trusting someone else to be the hero is the hard part."

Reese could identify with that. He didn't know if he could have trusted Finch to do what the Doctor trusted him to do, if he'd known. The Doctor had known him as a child for a few hours one day forty—or six hundred—years ago. Reese had known him for months. But it seemed that the Doctor had known him better.

"I'm only sorry," the Doctor said, "for what he had to do." His face had gone all tight and drawn during Martha's story. "What you almost had to do, Martha—"

"Doctor, what do you think of humans?"

They all swiveled their heads to stare at Finch, who was no longer asleep but staring up at them with his pale eyes in his pale face. He had a very familiar expresson on his face, the raised eyebrow of exasperation. Reese had received that look many a time.

"I think humans are _amazing._ And terrible, and wonderful!"

"But we're children, to you. Unable to make our own decisions and solve our own problems?"

"I—well—no—"

"We're in the same business you are, Doctor. We know what it's like. We volunteered. We would have figured it out, with or without you. As a race we have a certain amount of ingenuity, and I believe you once called us indestructible. No doubt we are all better off for having your watchful eye on us, but it doesn't mean that every bad thing that happens to us is your fault, or every time we go stick our necks into danger as part of our jobs."

"Oh, you humans," the Doctor said softly. "You are creatures of wonder."

Finch narrowed his eyes at him. "We're really rather mundane."

The Doctor laughed aloud. "You don't think that any more than I do, Harold. And you can't tell me you don't know what it's like to feel responsibility for people who know nothing about you, merely because you have a greater knowledge of the situation than they do."

"Of course. But if someone who works with me is injured in the course of his duty or is required to make difficult decisions, I don't try to shield him from his duty or his responsibility. If he has chosen to help bear the responsibility, so be it."

"Maybe you're a wiser man than I am, Harold," the Doctor said soberly.

"It's possible. Now, Miss Jones, I think I could eat, though if that is Chinese I smell, I don't think I can manipulate chopsticks with my left hand."

Martha produced a plastic fork with an air of triumph.

Reese sat back against the wall and let the sounds of the discussion wash around him. He remembered the moment when weight and responsibility had returned to him. Once he'd tried to drink himself into oblivion to get away from that guilt, that responsibility, those memories. Some day he might have gone the whole way to self-destruction just to get away from it. Yet it was that very guilt and responsibility that Finch had leveraged to get some use out of him, and now he realized that those things had given him purpose. Bearing the weight of other people—that was his life. It had become his identity.

He was aware of the Doctor looking at him and of the understanding in his eyes, as if the man was a mind reader. He didn't know what the Doctor had done in his past, this problem-solving alien who refused to carry a weapon and yet had the eyes of a man with countless lives on his hands. Probably it didn't even matter what he had done. What mattered was that he was an alien with Reese's eyes and a need to help and make things better that put his own and Finch's to shame. Six hundred years ago as a man old enough to have a granddaughter he had been doing it, and it seemed he had never stopped. Reese wasn't used to thinking in terms of "inspiration," but he knew that in the future, when times came when it seemed that he couldn't bear any more, he would remember the young man with the old eyes who let his vast guilt push him forward to action.


	13. Chapter 13: Finch

**When I'm laid to my rest**

****_Finch_

The Doctor hovered in the door of the TARDIS, clearly not wanting to go and yet afire with his plans. He was going after the Cretana. He'd told them he was going to something called the Shadow Proclamation to have the Cretana prosecuted, "because Earth is a Level 5 planet." But he didn't want to leave Finch's library. Finch didn't blame him. He never wanted to leave it either.

Reese held out his hand to the Doctor, but the Doctor shook his head with a grin and hugged him, greatly disconcerting him. Martha, meanwhile, was giving Finch last-minute instructions.

"Put some of this on it twice a day for the next three days. And _don't_ go moving your arm around a lot! Give it a _chance._ Just because it's going to heal quickly doesn't mean you can't still reopen it or become infected."

Finch arched his eyebrows. "Yes, Doctor."

"Oh, stop it. I _will_ be a doctor some day. I'm going to miss you, Mr. Finch. The Doctor's not half so snarky as you are."

"Snarky?"

"Yes, exactly like that." She suddenly looked down at her shoes. "Will you remember me, Mr. Finch? The way you do Susan?"

He tilted his head and looked at her. "I believe I will remember you better than Susan, Martha."

A grin went across her face. She hugged him, gently, so that it hardly hurt at all, and he didn't even mind it, though he knew he was never going to live down the look on Mr. Reese's face when she kissed his cheek. Doctors always felt they had the right to take liberties.

"Miss Jones," he said as she paused at the door of the TARDIS, "the next time I see you, I expect to be able to call you Dr. Jones."

"The next time I see you, Mr. Finch, you'd better call me Martha."

Finch and Reese watched as the TARDIS and her whirling sound faded. When she went, all the golden warmth he had almost ceased to notice went too, leaving him feeling oddly bereft.

"Well, Harold," Reese's low tones reached him, "looks like you've got yourself a fan."

"And you have found yourself a kindred spirit," he said in his driest tone. "My, how touching. Now it's time to get some rest. Another number could come at any moment, and you have been brainwashed and put unnecessarily on life support. You need rest."

"Are you _concerned_ about me, Harold?"

"I am concerned about the success of our next operation, Mr. Reese. Now stop snarking and go home."

"No, snarking is your department, according to Martha. Are you going to rest?"

"I've been shot, Mr. Reese. Of course I'm going to rest."

"Do you…need help?"

"I thought you said you weren't a nurse."

"Believe me, I'm not. I'm just concerned about the success of our next operation, Mr. Finch."

Finch pressed his lips together. The last thing he wanted was Reese carrying him to his bedroom, but as a rational man he could not deny that at present he could not get there by himself. He sighed. "Give me your arm, Mr. Reese."

Mr. Reese refrained from snarking any more and merely offered support on the slow walk to the bedroom Finch had created for himself in the library. Finch steadfastly refused all other offers of assistance, sitting stiffly on the edge of his bed.

Reese paused in the doorway on his way out. "You did good, Finch."

"Well," he said. "I did well."

Reese grinned. "Yeah. Thirty-two people, Finch."

"I know."

"You did good." He grinned at Finch's wince. "Good night, Harold."

"Good morning, Mr. Reese."

**The End.  
><strong>

**Except...not...**


	14. Expanded Ending

**Author's note: I am an inveterate lover of alternate endings and epilogues. This is a bit of both.**

* * *

><p><strong>Expanded Ending: <strong>

**When I'm laid to my rest**

_Finch_

The Doctor hovered in the door of the TARDIS, clearly not wanting to go and yet afire with his plans. He was going after the Cretana. He'd told them he was going to something called the Shadow Proclamation to have the Cretana prosecuted, "because Earth is a Level 5 planet." But he didn't want to leave Finch's library. Finch didn't blame him. He never wanted to leave it either.

Reese held out his hand to the Doctor, but the Doctor shook his head with a grin and hugged him, greatly disconcerting him. Martha, meanwhile, was giving Finch last-minute instructions.

"Put some of this on it twice a day for the next three days. And _don't_ go moving your arm around a lot! Give it a _chance._ Just because it's going to heal quickly doesn't mean you can't still reopen it or become infected."

Finch arched his eyebrows. "Yes, Doctor."

"Oh, stop it. I _will_ be a doctor some day. I'm going to miss you, Mr. Finch. The Doctor's not half so snarky as you are."

"Snarky?"

"Yes, exactly like that." She suddenly looked down at her shoes. "Will you remember me, Mr. Finch? The way you do Susan?"

He tilted his head and looked at her. "I believe I will remember you better than Susan, Martha."

A grin went across her face. She hugged him, gently, so that it hardly hurt at all, and he didn't even mind it, though he knew he was never going to live down the look on Mr. Reese's face when she kissed his cheek. Doctors always felt they had the right to take liberties.

"Miss Jones," he said as she paused at the door of the TARDIS, "the next time I see you, I expect to be able to call you Dr. Jones."

"The next time I see you, Mr. Finch, you'd better call me Martha."

Finch and Reese watched as the TARDIS and her whirling sound faded. When she went, all the golden warmth he had almost ceased to notice went too, leaving him feeling oddly bereft.

"Well, Harold," Reese's low tones reached him, "looks like you've got yourself a fan."

"And you have found yourself a kindred spirit," he said in his driest tone. "My, how touching. Now it's time to get some rest. Another number could come at any moment, and you have been brainwashed and put unnecessarily on life support. You need rest."

"Are you _concerned_ about me, Harold?"

"I am concerned about the success of our next operation, Mr. Reese. Now stop snarking and go home."

"No, snarking is your department, according to Martha. Are you going to rest?"

"I've been shot, Mr. Reese. Of course I'm going to rest."

"Do you…need help?"

"I thought you said you weren't a nurse."

"Believe me, I'm not. I'm just concerned about the success of our next operation, Mr. Finch."

Finch pressed his lips together. The last thing he wanted was Reese carrying him to his bedroom, but as a rational man he could not deny that at present he could not get there by himself. He sighed. "Give me your arm, Mr. Reese."

Mr. Reese refrained from snarking any more and merely offered support on the slow walk to the bedroom Finch had created for himself in the library. Finch steadfastly refused all other offers of assistance, sitting stiffly on the edge of his bed.

Reese paused in the doorway on his way out. "You did good, Finch."

"Well," he said. "I did well."

Reese grinned. "Yeah. Thirty-two people, Finch."

"I know."

"You did good." He grinned at Finch's wince. "Good night, Harold."

"Good morning, Mr. Reese."

He sat for a moment, then slowly and awkwardly leaned forward and took his shoes off. Shoes were difficult at the best of times. Then he lay back on his bed with a sigh. He could sleep forever now and would, until the laptop beside the bed alerted him to the next number.

His cell phone was in his left pocket. He dug it out. After every job, he always switched phones and phone numbers for himself and Reese and destroyed the old phones. He hadn't done that yet with these. He examined it absently. It was still force-paired with Martha's. It wasn't possible to still get a connection, was it? Not across time and space. But he turned it on and touched the appropriate keys, the ones that would activate the microphone on her phone.

It was the sound of the TARDIS, and laughter.

"Well, that'll settle the Cretana," he heard the Doctor say.

"You were brilliant, Doctor!" Martha laughed.

"More brilliant than Harold?" the Doctor teased.

Martha didn't say anything, but Finch could just imagine the look on her face.

"Martha," the Doctor said in a suddenly sober tone, "Finch sends his love."

"No, he doesn't!"

"Probably in the conventional sense of the phrase he does," the Doctor conceded. "Or will do."

"_Will_ do? When?"

"In 2015." His voice was suddenly so bleak Finch almost dropped the phone.

"What happens in 2015?"

"I don't know if I can tell you. For one thing, I don't know. For another thing, I don't know if I would be interfering in your timestream."

"I thought you knew everything, Doctor."

"Only most things."

"What's the real reason you won't tell me?"

"I—I—I can't talk about it, Martha. I can't."

Finch snapped the phone off and dropped it on the floor beside the bed.


	15. Epilogue Part 1: Reese

**Epilogue, Part 1**

**One man, scorned and covered with scars**

2015

_Reese_

It was when Finch was in the hospital that Reese met a man who had destroyed everything he loved and told him everything.

He walked out of the hospital, desperately needing air and the cool mist of the fall day. And there it was, the blue phone booth, across the road, like a postmodern sculpture in the park. He walked across the road. It was different—it was battered and scored, like it had been through battle. He pushed open the door, which creaked as it had not done before, and then he jerked to a halt.

It wasn't the TARDIS. It had to be the TARDIS, but it wasn't. It was huge—he had thought that the interior was outrageously large in comparison to its exterior, but this one was many times bigger. The console was surrounded by arched, grid-like metal pillars, all the colors glowing blue instead of warm browns and greens. It looked industrial instead of living, if industrial were to meet Byzantine. It also looked like it, too, had been through battle. Rubble littered the floor. One of the pillars had fallen. The central pillar, the one that pulsed green and went up and down, was instead flickering blue sparks.

"Hello? Doctor?"

He heard a sound and went around the central console, across the oddly huge space of floor. A man was slumped on the floor against the far wall, and he was not the Doctor. He was a short man with long, waving light brown hair, a long face, an old-fashioned coat and waistcoat, almost in shreds. Reese put out a hand to his shoulder.

"Are you alright? Are you injured? There's a hospital right outside. Can I help you?"

"I'm trying to decide whether to regenerate or not. At the moment, leaning toward not." He lifted his head, and Reese stared. It was a gentle, ravaged face, and the eyes were the Doctor's.

"You are the Doctor."

"I was the Doctor. Now I have become Death, the destroyer of worlds." He had a soft, almost hesitant way of speaking, a posh British accent, and none of the funny-man about him. His Doctor's eyes were younger and filled with horror, grief, despair. The eyes of a good man who has just taken life.

"Oppenheimer," Reese said. "He said that after the atomic bomb. Or so they say."

The man—the younger Doctor, though maybe older than the older Doctor—squinted up at him. "Have we met?"

"Yes. And no. I don't know if I can say. Mixing the time streams is dangerous. I'm Reese. Are you injured?"

"I'm dying."

"But you can…regenerate?"

"Isn't eight lifetimes enough? I can't do this anymore."

Reese touched his shoulder again. "Yes, you can. Believe me, you can."

"I don't want to."

That could not be argued with.

"Where are we?"

"Outside a hospital in New York City. Earth."

"New York. So close. So far. We were aiming for San Francisco. Back to the beginning. At least I got the hospital part right. Or she did."

"The TARDIS?"

"Yes. Look at her. I didn't intend this. I intended us to die along with everyone else."

"Maybe she had other plans."

"She does have a mind of her own. But if I die, she will die too." He sighed. His head drooped. "I don't want to make this decision. She doesn't want to die," he murmured. "She wants…somewhere quiet. We can't die outside of a hospital."

"I know a place. It's very quiet. The owner…won't be back."

The Doctor looked up at him searchingly. "Take us there, Reese. Show me where it is." He reached out a slender hand and touched Reese's cheek. "Think of it."

Reese thought of the library. In a moment the Doctor struggled to his feet and staggered to the console. Giving the direction seemed to be less complicated than it was before—would be, in the future—and the TARDIS had to work harder.

"Poor dear," the Doctor murmured, holding on. "We're old, dear. Don't you think it's time? Don't we deserve it, after what we did?"

He went toward the door. "Where have you brought us? She likes it here." He opened the door. "Oh, a library. No wonder she likes it."

"No wonder she and Finch got on so well," Reese muttered.

The Doctor took a few steps out and staggered; Reese caught him under the arms and brought him to a fat, brown leather chair.

"I have a chair like this. A good chair. A very good chair. And the man who sits here is a good man. Intelligent. Afraid. Conflicted."

"You got that right, though I don't know how you can tell that from a chair."

"I tend to be very psychic in this regeneration. Also amnesiac, which would be very useful right about now. I am going to sit here in this chair until I die, Reese. Or regenerate. I must decide. Help me to make the right decision."

Reese shuddered.

"I'm sorry. I have caught you at a bad time. I can see it in your eyes. You are in a crisis of your own. The hospital—you had just come from there? A relative, or friend?"

"My friend, who owns this library. He's dying."


	16. Epilogue Part 2: Finch

**Epilogue, Part 2  
><strong>

**To fight the unbeatable foe  
><strong>

_Finch_

"Oh, Mr. Finch."

The voice pierced through the drug-induced haze of unconsciousness, though it was a very quiet voice. A British voice. A voice made for smiling, not for the tears in it.

He forced his eyes to open a crack. No, it was only a doctor, white-coated, dark-haired.

But he'd heard a name no doctor here knew. He forced his heavy tongue to obey him. "Dr. Jones?"

A figure blocked the light from the window, and a hand raised his head slightly and helped him drink water.

"Dr. Jones?"

"Please don't try to talk, Mr. Finch."

"I'm dying. If I want to spend my last hours talking rather than in a drugged stupor, I'll do it."

"Oh, Mr. Finch."

"Please stop standing in the light so I can see you."

Martha turned so the light fell on her. She was older, in her thirties. Lovelier.

"How long?"

"Chronologically, eight years. But I have gained a couple extra years in there."

"And are you Dr. Jones?"

"No." The tears in her voice struggled with a smile. "Technically I'm Dr. Smith. I got married, a few years ago. His name's Mickey. Sometimes Ricky. He's out hunting aliens in Queens."

"Of course he is. Why are you here?"

"Same old Mr. Finch. Charming and hospitable. I'm here because I knew that in 2015 I needed to be here. I've been in New York all year. I've been looking in libraries, police stations, government buildings, hospitals. You and Reese are worse than ghosts. I don't have the ability to hack into records like you do, but psychic paper does come in handy. I just found you here a few minutes ago. Harold Sparrow indeed. Why not just hang out an advertisement?"

"How do you know that wasn't the intention, Dr. Smith?"

Martha laughed. "Oh, Mr. Finch, what happened to you?"

"What happened to you?"

"I asked first."

"And that gives you priority?"

"Yes, it does."

Finch sighed. "A tumor, on my spine. Ironic, isn't it? It was operable, once, but I didn't know it was there. I equated the increase in pain with the stress of my work on my pre-existing condition. By the time I agreed to Mr. Reese's insistence that I get it checked out, it was too late. Oh, there have been operations, treatments, but all along they were useless. So here I am. I decided against hospice. If I didn't like people hovering over me in life, why should I want them in death?"

He felt gentle hands taking one of his. He tried to give her the raised eyebrow and failed.

"Where's Reese?"

"He was here, earlier. Hovering. He reads aloud, which is welcome, but we agreed that he wouldn't keep hovering while I sleep."

"You mean you agreed."

He managed the eyebrow this time. "Now it is your turn, Dr. Smith."

She leaned down. "Only if you call me Martha."

"I am not amenable to extortion."

"Do you intend to take your dignity with you into the jaws of death?"

"Yes."

"You're just as adorable as you were eight—or ten—or three years ago."

"I never was, Dr. Smith."

"You were, and you are, and I'm going to keep saying so until you call me Martha."

Finch sighed again. Doctors. He couldn't remember the last time he'd been on the winning side of an argument.

"Martha," he said, "you owe me a story."

Martha pulled a chair up and took his hand again. He couldn't pull away. Every shred of energy was going into staying awake. And he wasn't sure if he wanted to if he could.

"It's hard to keep track of time in the TARDIS," Martha said, "but I think I traveled with the Doctor for another six months or so. But I couldn't stop thinking about what you said. About family and my life and dreams. And then we came to the end of the universe…"


	17. Epilogue Part 3: Reese

**Epilogue, Part 3  
><strong>

**If I'll only be true to this glorious quest**

_Reese_

"I'll help you make your decision," Reese said, "but you have to tell me what you did that's worthy of your death and the TARDIS's."

The Doctor told him. He didn't understand it all, Time Lords and Daleks and Time Wars and timelocking, but he didn't have to. He heard that a man doing what he thought—knew—he had to do destroyed what he loved, his own past as well as his future, and that he understood. He remembered being in a place where his own past and future were dead by his own hand, and he remembered how one man had given him something to live for.

"Doctor," he said, "you deserve to die."

He saw the Doctor's shoulders slump with relief.

"That's why you can't die."

The ravaged eyes stared up at him, angry.

"You want relief from guilt and responsibility, but you can't have it. You want to pay the penalty for your crimes? Pay it by living. For men like us, that's harder than dying. The only way you can pay for the murder of the guilty is to rescue the innocent."

The Doctor, who had told his tale in the monotone of a trauma victim in shock, was sobbing. A refugee, a murderer, an orphan, a savior—what did it matter, when the world had crumbled? Reese was almost sorry for what he had condemned him to. But he himself was a testament to the fact that when your world was gone, another world was possible.

So he began to tell his own story, all of it. The bits no one knew, not Finch, not the CIA. The bits they all knew and he could never talk about. He even told him his name. And he told him about Finch, his little broken savior, the man who four years ago had coerced him into a life of purpose. His friend, though they never spoke of it. The partner he would die for and who would die for him, though neither would ever say so. The brother who sometimes was the younger brother to be protected and sometimes was the older brother and protected him, though they would have died rather than admit it.

He thought he had long ago lost the capacity for tears for yet another devastating loss in a life milestoned by devastating losses, until he found the Doctor digging in a pocket and handing him a handkerchief as old-fashioned as his clothes. He wiped his face. Tears gone, not the heaviness.

"He's dying," the Doctor said.

"Yes."

"What will you do?"

"I could give up. But I can't. Finch didn't force his purpose on me. He helped me find my own. I'm still a rescuer. When we learned he was dying, he taught me the rudiments of how his Machine works. I'll probably hire…an employee, like he hired me, a hacker who can do what he did. Someone I can trust to do what is right, as he trusted me. As long as the government continues to use the Machine, I'll continue to use it too."

The Doctor closed his eyes. He was still for a long moment. "Will you help me?"

"Yes."

Reese supported him back into the TARDIS. He leaned against the console.

"You'd better stand back. Back by the door."

He held up his hands as Reese retreated. They seemed to be glowing, though that was ridiculous. "I don't want to do this," he said in a trembling voice. "I'm not strong enough for this penance. But maybe my next self will be."

Light shot out of him. Reese stumbled back against the door and shielded his eyes. The Doctor's body stretched out galvanically, on fire with golden light. It grew, became taller, arms shooting through tattered sleeves. The face rounded; the waving hair disappeared.

The TARDIS too was responding, the blue pillar shooting up and down convulsively, flashing green. Metal pillars fell; the walls seemed to ripple and convulse. Plant-like tendrils shot up out of the floor. Reese huddled against the door, shielding his head from the pieces of ceiling raining down.

A hand grabbed his. "Run!" The Doctor pulled him through the heaving room and down a corridor. The corridor quaked, but nothing fell on their heads. "She's always the most dramatic in there. These back areas don't change too much. Ah, here we are." He yanked him into a room where it was still, the quaking and noise muffled. Because it was…a closet.

A very large closet, hung with what looked like an entire theatre's wardrobe department. Reese stared at the Doctor.

He was tall again. He had long, lanky arms and legs, dark, receding hair buzzed short, a round head with pronounced chin, unnecessarily long nose, unnecessarily wide mouth, and ears that stuck out. He was older, in more ways than one. The grief had settled into his eyes. And he looked ridiculous in the old-fashioned suit that had been so appropriate to him minutes before. He yanked off the cravat and threw it on the floor before shoving his way through clothes.

"Ah, there it is!" Even his accent was different, more depth to the vowels. He pulled a black leather jacket down. "Fantastic! I've always wanted to wear this! Never could, though. Do you mind if I change? Black trousers—excellent. I have a feeling I'm an all-black kind of bloke. Oh—_bloke._ I say _bloke_ now. There. What do you think?" He spread out his long arms with a grin that split his face wide.

He looked like a hood. Not the sort of man you'd want to meet in a dark alley.

"It suits you," Reese said.

The smile faded. "I don't know if I can thank you, John. Not yet."

"You already have, in a way."

The eyes were piercing, and a different color, but still the Doctor's eyes. "In the future?"

"In the past."

The TARDIS gave a lurch that nearly knocked them both down.

"You need to get out of here. She's not done. I need to take her into space. But if I'm right, we're back at the hospital. Come along!"

They hurried back through the TARDIS, which was still changing but now looking much more like herself. The Doctor opened the door.

"There you are! Safe and sound. You left less than an hour ago."

Reese looked out at the hospital, up at the window that was Finch's. "Doctor, tell Martha that Finch sends his love. I'm sure he would, if he could."

"Martha?"

"You'll know, when the time is right."

"I will. John, I want to give you something."

Reese turned back to look at him.

"My first act as the Ninth Doctor—the Doctor you made me, John. Give me your hand."


	18. Epilogue Part 4: Finch

**Epilogue, Part 4  
><strong>

**To right the unrightable wrong  
><strong>

_Finch_

"Would it surprise you to know that I already knew all this?" Finch asked. He hadn't been going to tell her, but he had to talk to fight off pain and drowsiness.

"What do you mean? No one knows, except my family and Mickey. No one remembers. _You_ didn't remember when we met in 2012."

"No. But you have a very remarkable cell phone, Miss Jones. Dr. J—Sm—" He was losing track of everything.

"Martha," she said gently.

"Please give me water. Thank you. And then squeeze my hand."

"If you need to sleep, you should sleep."

"I'm not going to sleep!" he said angrily. "Please, Martha."

She sighed and took his hand again.

"Thank you. If you see me nodding off, squeeze hard. I'm not wasting the time I have left with sleeping. What I was saying was, it was very foolish of you to take your cell phone with you while you were running from the Master for that year."

"It was turned off! I even took the battery out. I just—it was my only connection to—to the past."

He couldn't shake his head, so he rolled his eyes. "Apparently you learned nothing about surveillance in our little adventure in 2012. My phone was still force-paired with yours. I listened to you for that entire year."

Martha's mouth dropped open.

"Mr. Reese never knew, so don't you tell him. I can only assume that the Doctor did something to your phone to make it work no matter where and when you were. It worked even while you were in an alternate timeline that now never happened. I listened to you experiencing a 2008 that I don't remember while I was in 2013."

"Why, Mr. Finch?" she asked softly. "Why did you listen?"

"Because I could. Because I'm a sucker for surveillance."

"Liar."

"No, it's true. I am."

"No, I believe that. I don't believe you listened because you have a compulsion to eavesdrop. You _cared,_ didn't you?"

He stared at the ceiling.

"It won't kill you to admit it, Mr. Finch. Not now that—"

"That I'm dying?" he said deliberately. "You're a doctor. You can say it. Well, Miss Jones, the truth is that you were alone, and you are not a person who is designed to be alone. I am. It suits me. But you aren't. So I listened because, though I am not a fanciful man, I know now that there is more in heaven and on earth than my philosophy once allowed me to dream, and I thought perhaps on occasion you would sense that someone was with you."

Tears stood on Martha's eyelashes. "I don't know if I did, Mr. Finch. It was a lonely year. But I never lost my purpose, and I was stronger than I would ever have imagined. I thought it was all the Doctor, but maybe it was you too. We both traveled in the TARDIS. Anything's possible. Are you still listening?"

"No. I heard you tell the Doctor it was time for you to have your own life, and that was my signal that it was time to stop eavesdropping. I destroyed that phone as I should have done a year and a half before."

"I'm glad you didn't."

"But now for the rest…" His eyes drooped. A squeeze of his hand roused him again. "Thank you. The rest."

"The rest?"

"You have told me about one year that I already knew about. There are seven more…"

"And I _have_ to tell you about Mickey. Would you believe he was Rose's boyfriend?"

"I am not acquainted with Rose."

"The bane of my existence, or so I thought. Mickey was recovering from her, I was recovering from the Doctor, we met, and it was magic, Mr. Finch. We were both running from the same alien, he was carrying this huge gun, I mean, really massive, and I had this hypodermic that was supposed to knock it out, and we ran into each other—literally—and nearly used them on each other."

"Oh, yes, sounds like magic to me."

"Well, it _was,"_ Martha laughed. "Once we decided not to kill each other."

"Now, who would you be killing, Martha Jones?" came a soft voice from across the room.

Martha sprang out of her seat. "Reese!"

"Don't touch me. I mean it, Martha. Don't touch me. Welcome, by the way. I could use your help."

Martha stared at him. "You're as friendly as always, Mr. Reese."

"Thank you. I met a mutual friend, Harold."

"I hope you haven't invited Detective Carter to come hold vigil, Mr. Reese."

"No, though she has come to see you, you know. No, this was a mutual friend to the three of us."

"The Doctor?" Martha cried. "How was he? I haven't seen him in _years—"_

"He wasn't the Doctor you knew, Martha. He was earlier than your Doctor. He regenerated right in front of me—and then he still wasn't the Doctor we knew. But he gave me a gift."

"What?"

Reese came up to the side of the bed and held out his hands so Finch could see them. They were glowing. "Regenerative energy. Massively dangerous to humans in large doses, but this is just a drop. Just enough for one human. Harold, this is probably going to hurt. Martha, will you roll him onto his side?"

By the look on Martha's face, she knew what was going to happen. She stripped back the blankets.

"Nice pajamas, Harold," Reese said, snarky as ever. "Just what one would expect of you."

Finch closed his eyes as Martha's professional hands turned him on his side. He was trembling with pain, fear, and hope.

Reese bent down and put his hands on his friend's spine. A golden warmth entered Finch's mind and washed from his brain to the end of his spine. And then, for the first time in more than five years, there was no pain.

He felt Reese take his hands away and Martha return him to his back. He lay with his eyes closed, feeling that warm painlessness, while outside he could hear Martha saying, "How long will it take?" and Reese answering, "I don't know."

Finch opened his eyes. Slowly and awkwardly—the pins were still there in his neck and back, but they didn't hurt, and he knew that the tumor was gone—he sat up and brought his feet over the side of the bed, sitting there stiffly and primly in his neat pajamas.

"Mr. Reese, will you fetch my laptop? I want to see if a new number has come in. Martha, if it has, would you and Mr. Smith care to join us?"


End file.
